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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



JUN 4 1S8S 



SILENT TIMES: 

a Book 

TO HELP IN READING THE BIBLE 
INTO LIFE. 



BY 



THE REV. J. R. MILLER, D.D., 

AUTHOR OF " WEEK-DAY RELIGION," " HOME-MAKING/' 

"IN his steps," etc. 






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BOSTON: 

THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO., $ 
1886. 



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Copyright, 1886, 
By THOMAS Y. CROWELL & CO. 




ELECTROTYPED AND PRINTED 

BY RAND, AVERY, AND COMPANY, 

BOSTON. 



PREFACE. 



The point at which many Christians fail in the using 
of divine truths is the point at which doctrine should 
be transmuted into life. They know and honor the 
Bible as the word of God, and sincerely wish to con- 
form their lives to its inspired teachings, but have 
difficulty in applying them to the actual experiences 
of daily life. This book is offered as a humble help 
in this direction. Its aim is to bring the divine lessons 
down, and give some hints of the way they may be 
used on common days and in the actual experiences of 
those days. The title, " Silent Times," is suggestive 
of the need of seasons of quiet in every life that would 
grow into full, rich beauty. It is suggestive also of 
one particular use that may be made of the book, — 
the reading of its chapters, or portions of them, in 
the " silent times " of busy, feverish days, as helps 
in the direction of true Christian growth. The book 
is sent out in Christ's name, and with the hope that 
it may make the way a little plainer for some earnest 
pilgrims, and religion a little more real, and that it 
may become a lamp for some dark ways, and a staff 
for some rough and steep paths. 

J. R. M. 

Philadelphia. 



CONTENTS. 



CHAPTER PAGE 

I. Silent Times 7 

II. Personal Friendship with Christ . 17 

III. Having Christ in Us 29 

IV. Copying but a Fragment 41 

V. Thy Will, not Mine 52 

VI. God's Reserve of Goodness .... 62 

VII. The Blessing of Not Getting ... 73 

VIII. "Afterward" 84 

IX. The Blessedness of Longing ... 93 

X. The Cost and Worth of Sympathy. 102 

XI. Finding One's Mission . ... . . . 112 

XII. Living up to our Best Intentions . 123 

XIII. Life's Double Ministry 134 

XIV. The Ministry of Well-wishing . . 145 
XV. Helping without Money 156 

XVI. Timeliness in Duty 171 

XVII. The Office of Consoler 181 

XVIII. Living by the Day 191 

XIX. Habits in Religious Life 200 

XX. The Power of the Tongue . , . . 213 

XXI. The Home Conversation 223 

XXII. An Old Bible Portrait 234 

XXIII. Sorrow in Christian Homes. . . . 243 

XXIV. Dealing with Our Sins 254 



SILENT TIMES. 



CHAPTER I. 

SILENT TIMES. 

In Wellesley College a special feature of the 
daily life of the household is the morning and 
evening " silent time." Both at the opening 
and closing of the day, there is a brief period, 
marked by the strokes of a bell, in which all 
the house is quiet. Every pupil is in her room. 
There is no conversation. No step is heard in 
the corridors. The whole great house with its 
thronging life is as quiet as if all its hundreds 
of inmates were sleeping. There is no posi- 
tively prescribed way of spending these silent 
minutes in the rooms, but it is understood that 
all whose hearts so incline them shall devote 
the time to devotional reading, meditation, and 
prayer. At least, the design of establishing 
this period of quiet as part of the daily life of 

7 



8 SILENT TIMES. 

the school, is to give opportunity for such devo- 
tional exercises, and by its solemn hush to 
suggest to all the fitness, the helpfulness, and 
the need of such periods of communion with 
God. The bell that calls for silence, also calls 
to thought and prayer ; and even the most in- 
different must be affected by its continual 
recurrence. 

Every true Christian life needs its daily 
" silent times," when all shall be still, when 
the busy activity of other hours shall cease, 
and when the heart, in holy hush, shall com- 
mune with God. One of the greatest needs 
in Christian life in these days is more devotion. 
Ours is not an age of prayer so much as an 
age of work. The tendency is to action rather 
than to worship ; to busy toil rather than to 
quiet sitting at the Saviour's feet to commune 
with him. The key-note of our present Chris- 
tian life is consecration, which is understood to 
mean devotion to active service. On every 
hand we are incited to work. Our zeal is 
stirred by every inspiring incentive. The calls 
to duty come to us from a thousand earnest 
voices. 



SILENT TIMES. 9 

And this is well. There is little fear that 
we shall ever grow too earnest in working for 
our Master, or that our enthusiasm in his ser- 
vice shall ever become too intense. We are 
set on earth to toil for the world's good and for 
God's glory. The day's heat is not to draw us 
from our active duty. Till death comes, as 
God's messenger to call us from toil, we are 
not to seek to be freed from service. Devotion 
is not all. Peter wished to stay on the Mount 
of Transfiguration, to go back no more to the 
cold, sin-stricken world below; but no : down at 
the mountain's base, human suffering and sor- 
row were waiting for the coming of the Healer, 
and the Master and his disciples must leave 
the rapture of heavenly communion, and hasten 
down to carry healing and comfort. It is always 
so. While we enjoy the blessedness of fellow- 
ship with God in the closet, there come in at 
our closed doors, and break upon our ears, the 
cries of human need and sorrow outside. Amid 
the raptures of devotion we hear the calls of 
duty waiting without. We should never allow 
our ecstasies of spiritual enjoyment to make 



10 SILENT TIMES. 

us forgetful of the needs of others around us. 
Even the Mount of Transfiguration must not 
hold us away from ministry. 

The truest religious life is one whose devo- 
tion gives food and strength for service. The 
way to spiritual health lies in the paths of con- 
secrated activity. It is related in monastic 
legends of St. Francesca, that although she was 
unwearied in her devotions, yet if during her 
prayers she was summoned away by any domes- 
tic duty, she would close her book cheerfully, 
saying that a wife and a mother, when called 
upon, must quit her God at the altar to find 
him in her domestic affairs. Yet the ■ other 
side is just as true. Before there can be a 
strong, vigorous, healthy tree, able to bear 
much fruit, to stand the storm, to endure the 
heat and cold, there must be a well-planted and 
well-nourished root ; and before there can be 
a prosperous, noble, enduring Christian life in 
the presence of the world, safe in temptation, 
unshaken in trials, full of good fruits, perennial 
and unfading in its leaf, there must be a close 
walk with God in secret. We must receive 



SILENT TIMES. II 

from God before we can give to others, for we 
have nothing of our own with which to feed 
men's hunger or quench their thirst. We are 
but empty vessels at the best, and must wait 
to be filled before we have any thing to carry 
to those who need. We must listen at heaven's 
gates before we can go out to sing the heavenly 
songs in the ears of human weariness and sor- 
row. Our lips must be touched with a coal 
from God's altar before we can become God's 
messengers to men. We must lie much upon 
Christ's bosom before our poor earthly lives 
can be struck through with the spirit of Christ, 
and made to shine in the transfigured beauty 
of his blessed life. Devotion is never to dis- 
place duty, — it often brings new duties to our 
hands, — but it fits us for activity. 

" That Thy full glory may abound, increase, 
And so Thy likeness shall be formed in me, 

I pray : the answer is not rest or peace, 

But charges, duties, wants, anxieties, 

Till there seems room for every thing but Thee, 

And never time for any thing but these. 



12 SILENT TIMES. 

The busy fingers fly ; the eyes may see 
Only the glancing needle which they hold : 

But all my life is blossoming inwardly, 

And every breath is like a litany ; 

While through each labor, like a thread of gold, 

Is woven the sweet consciousness of Thee." 

In order to this preparation for usefulness 
and service, we all need to get into the course 
of our lives many quiet hours, when we shall sit 
alone with Christ in personal communion with 
him, listening- to his voice, renewing our wasted 
strength from his fulness, and being trans- 
formed in character by looking into his face. 
Busy men need such quiet periods of spiritual 
communion ; for their days of toil, care, and 
struggle tend to wear out the fibre of their 
spiritual life, and exhaust their inner strength. 
Earnest women need such silent times, for there 
are many things in their daily household life and 
social life to exhaust their supplies of grace. 
The care of their children, the very routine of 
their home-life, the thousand little things that 
try their patience, vex their spirits, and tend to 
break their calm ; the influences of much of 



SILENT TIMES. 1 3 

their social life, with its manifold temptations 
to artificialness, insincerity, formality, unreality, 
or, on the other hand, to frivolity, idleness, van- 
ity, and worldliness, — amid all these distract- 
ing, dissipating, secularizing influences, every 
earnest woman needs to get into her life at 
least one quiet hour every day, when, like Mary, 
she can wait at the feet of Jesus, and have her 
own soul calmed and fed. 

Preachers, teachers, Christian workers, all 
need the same. How can men stand in the 
Lord's house to speak his words to the people 
unless they have first waited at Christ's feet to 
get their message ? How can any one teach the 
children the truths of life without having been 
himself freshly taught of God ? How can any 
one bear heavenly gifts to needy souls if he has 
not been at the Load's treasure-house to get 
these gifts ? Dr. Austin Phelps, in speaking of 
the danger of incessant Christian activity with- 
out a corresponding secret life with God, says, 
"The very obvious peril is, that the vitality of 
holiness may be exhausted by inward decay 
through the want of an increase of its devo- 



14 SILENT TIMES. 

tional spirit proportioned to the expansion of 
its active forces. Individual experience may 
become shallow for the want of meditative 
habits and much communion with God. Activ- 
ity can never sustain itself. Withdraw the vital 
force which animates and propels it, and it falls 
like a dead arm. We cannot, then, too keenly 
feel, each one for himself, that a still and secret 
life with God must energize all holy duty, as 
vigor in every fibre of the body must come 
from the strong, calm, faithful beat of the 
heart." 

A Christian man of intense business enter- 
prise and activity was laid aside by sickness. 
He who never would intermit his labors was 
compelled to come to a dead halt. His restless 
limbs were stretched motionless on the bed. 
He was so weak that he could scarcely utter a 
word. Speaking to a friend of the contrast 
between his condition now and when he had 
been driving his immense business, he said, 
"Now I am growing. I have been running 
my soul thin by my activity. Now I am grow- 
ing in the knowledge of myself and of some 



SILENT TIMES. 1 5 

things which most intimately concern me." 
No doubt there are many of us who are run- 
ning our souls thin by our incessant action, 
without finding quiet hours for feeding and 
waiting upon God. 

" The world is too much with us : late and soon, 
Getting and spending, we lay waste our powers. 
Little we see in nature that is ours : 
We have given our souls away, a sordid boon." 

Blessed, then, is sickness or sorrow or any ex- 
perience that compels us to stop, that takes 
the work out of our hands for a little season, 
that empties our hearts of their thousand cares, 
and turns them toward God to be taught of 
him. 

But why should we wait for sickness or sor- 
row to compel into our lives these necessary 
quiet hours ? Would it not be far better for us 
to train ourselves to go apart each day for a 
little season from the noisy, chilling world, to 
look into God's face and into our own hearts, 
to learn the things we need so much to learn, 
and to draw secret strength and life from the 



1 6 SILENT TIMES. 

fountain of life in God ? George Herbert's 
quaint lines contain wise counsel : — 

" By all means use sometimes to be alone ; 

Salute thyself, see what thy soul doth wear. 
Dare to look in thy closet, — for 'tis thine own, — 
And tumble up and down what thou findest there." 

With these sacred " silent times " in every- 
day of toil and struggle, we shall be always 
strong, and "prepared unto every good work." 
Waiting thus upon God, we shall daily renew 
our wasted strength, and be able to run and 
not be weary, to walk and not be faint, and to 
mount up with wings as eagles in bold spiritual 
flights. 



CHAPTER II. 

PERSONAL FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

" I would converse with Thee from day to day, 
With heart intent on what Thou hast to say, 
And through my pilgrim-walk, whate'er befall, 
Consult with Thee, O Lord ! about it all. 
Since Thou art willing thus to condescend 
To be my intimate, familiar friend, 
Oh ! let me to the great occasion rise, 
And count Thy friendship life's most glorious prize ! " 

We are in danger on several sides of super- 
ficial and shallow conceptions of a religious life. 
One of these is, that it consists in correct doc- 
trinal beliefs, that holding firmly and intelli- 
gently to the truths of the gospel about Christ 
makes one a Christian. Another is the liturgi- 
cal, that the faithful observance of the forms 
of worship is the essential element in a Chris- 
tian life. Still another is, that conduct is all, 
that Christianity is but a system of morality. 
Then, even among those who fully accept the 

17 



1 8 FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

doctrine of Christ's atonement for sin, there is 
ofttimes an inadequate conception of the life of 
faith, a dependence for salvation upon one great 
past act of Christ, — his death, — without form- 
ing with him a personal relation as a present, 
living Saviour. In the New Testament the 
Christian's relation to Christ is represented as 
a personal acquaintance with him, which ripens 
into a close and tender friendship. This was 
our Lord's own ideal of discipleship. He in- 
vited men to come to him, to break other ties, 
and attach themselves personally to him ; to 
leave all and go with him. He claimed the full 
allegiance of men's hearts and lives : he must 
be first in their affections, and first in their 
obedience and service. He offered himself to 
men, not merely as a helper from without, not 
merely as one who would save them by taking 
their sins and dying for them, but as one who 
desired to form with them a close, intimate, and 
indissoluble friendship. It was not a tie of 
duty merely, or of obligation, or of doctrine, or 
of cause, by which he sought to bind his follow- 
ers to himself, but a tie of personal friendship. 



FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 1 9 

That which makes one a Christian is not 
therefore the acceptance of Christ's teachings, 
the uniting with his church, the adoption of his 
morals, the espousing of his cause, but the re- 
ceiving of him as a personal Saviour, the enter- 
ing into a covenant of eternal friendship with 
him. We are not saved by a creed, which gath- 
ers up in a few golden sentences the essence of 
the truth about Christ's person and work : we 
must have the Christ himself whom the creed 
holds forth in his radiant beauty and grace. 
We are in the habit of saying that Christ saved 
us by dying for us on the cross. In an impor- 
tant sense, this is true. We never could have 
been saved if he had not died for us. But 
we are actually saved by our relation to a 
living, loving, personal Saviour, into whose 
hands we commit all the interests of our lives, 
and who becomes our friend, our helper, our 
keeper, our care-taker, our all in all. Chris- 
tian faith is not merely laying our sins on the 
Lamb of God and trusting to his one great 
sacrifice : it is the laying of ourselves on the 
living, loving heart of one whose friendship 



20 FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

becomes thenceforward the sweetest joy of our 
lives. 

The importance of this personal knowledge 
of Christ is seen when we think of him as the 
revealer of the Father. The disciples first 
learned to know Christ in his disguise, with his 
divine glory veiled. He led them on, talking 
to them, walking with them, winning their confi- 
dence and their love, and at length they learned 
that the Being who had grown so inexpressibly 
dear to them was the manifestation of God him- 
self, and that by their relation to him as his 
friends, their poor, sinful humanity was lifted up 
into union with the Father. They became chil- 
dren of God through their attachment to the 
only-begotten Son of God. Clinging to him, and 
cleaving to him in deathless friendship, in his 
humiliation, he exalted them in his exaltation 
to be joint-heirs with him in his divine inherit- 
ance. It was as if a royal prince should leave 
his father's palace for a time, and in disguise 
dwell among the plain people as one of them- 
selves, winning their love, and binding them 
to him in strong personal friendship, and then, 



FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 21 

disclosing his royalty, should lead them to his 
palace, and keep them about him ever after as 
his friends and brothers, sharing his rank and 
honors with them. The friends Christ won in 
his lowly condescension he did not cast off 
when he went back to his glory : he lifted them 
up with him to share his heavenly blessedness. 
It is in the same way that Christ now saves 
men. He wins their love and trust by the 
manifestation of his love for them, and then 
exalts them to the possession of the privileges 
which belong to himself as the Son of God. 
Any one whose life is knit to Christ in love and 
faith, is lifted up into the family of God. Some 
one has represented this truth in this way : A 
vine has been torn from the tree on which it 
grew and clung, and lies on the ground : it 
never can lift itself up again to its place. Then 
the tree bends down low until it touches the 
earth. The vine unclasps its tendrils which 
have twined about frail and unworthy weeds, 
and, feebly reaching upward, fixes them upon 
the tree's strong, living branches. The tree, 
again lifting itself up, carries the vine with it 



22 FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

to its natural and original place of beauty and 
fruitfulness, where it shares the tree's glory. 
This is a parable of soul-history. We were 
torn from our place, and lay perishing in our 
sins, clinging to the earth's treacherous trusts. 
We could never lift ourselves up to God. Then 
God himself stooped down in the incarnation, 
bending low to touch these souls of ours ; and 
when our hearts let go earth's sins and its frail, 
false trusts, and lay hold never so feebly, by the 
tendrils of faith and love, upon Christ, we are 
lifted up, and become children and heirs of God. 
But how may we form a personal acquaint- 
ance with Christ ? It was easy enough for 
John and Mary, and the others who knew him 
in the flesh. His eyes looked into theirs ; they 
heard his words ; they sat at his feet, or leaned 
upon his bosom. We cannot know Christ in 
this way, for he is gone from earth ; and we 
ask how it is possible for us to have more than 
a biographical acquaintance with him. If he 
were a mere man, nothing more than this 
would be possible. It were absurd to talk 
about knowing St. John personally, or forming 



FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 23 

an intimate friendship with St. Paul. We may- 
learn much of the character of these men from 
the fragments of their story which are pre- 
served in the Scriptures, but we can never 
become personally acquainted with them until 
we meet them in the other world. With Christ, 
however, it is different. The Church did not 
lose him when he ascended from Olivet. He 
never was more really in the world than he is 
now. He is as much to those who love him 
and believe on him as he was to his friends 
in Bethany. He is a present, living Saviour ; 
and we may form with him an actual relation 
of personal friendship, which will grow closer 
and tenderer as the years go on, deepening with 
each new experience, shining more and more in 
our hearts, until at last, passing through the 
portal which men misname death, but which 
really is the beautiful gate of life, we shall see 
him face to face, and know him even as we are 
known. 

Is it possible for all Christians to attain 
this personal, conscious intimacy with Christ ? 
There are some who do not seem to realize it. 



24 FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

To them Christ is a creed, a rule of life, an 
example, a teacher, but not a friend. There 
are some excellent Christians who seem to 
know Christ only biographically. They have 
no experimental knowledge of him : he is to 
them at best an absent friend, — living, faithful, 
and trusted, but still absent. No word of dis- 
couragement, however, should be spoken to 
such. The Old Testament usually goes before 
the New, in experience as well as in the bibli- 
cal order. Most Christians begin with the 
historical Christ, knowing of him before they 
know him. Conscious personal intimacy with 
him is ordinarily a later fruit of spiritual growth ; 
yet it certainly appears from the Scriptures 
that such intimacy is possible to all who truly 
believe in Christ. Christ himself hungers for 
our friendship, and for recognition by us, and 
answering affection from us ; and if we take 
his gifts without himself and his love, we surely 
rob ourselves of much joy and blessedness. 

The way to this experimental knowledge of 
Christ is very plainly marked out for us by our 
Lord himself. He says that if we love him, and 



FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 25 

keep his words, he will manifest himself unto 
us, and he and his Father will come and make 
their abode with us. It is in loving him, and 
doing his will, that we learn to know Christ; 
and we learn to love him by trusting him. A 
dying youth looked up into the face of a friend, 
and with troubled tones said, " I want to love 
Christ : will you tell me how ? " — " Trust him 
first," was the answer, " and you will learn to 
love him without trying at all." It was a new 
revelation. " I always thought I must love 
Christ before I could have any right to trust 
him," was the answer. Ofttimes we learn to 
know our human friends by trusting them. 
We see no special beauty or worth in them as 
they move by our side in the ordinary experi- 
ences of life : but we pass at length into cir- 
cumstances of trial, where we need friendship ; 
and then the noble qualities of our friends 
appear, as we trust them, and they come nearer 
to us, and prove themselves true. In like man- 
ner, most of us really get acquainted with 
Christ only in experiences of need, in which his 
love and faithfulness are revealed. 



26 FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

The value of a personal acquaintance with 
Christ is incalculable. There are men and 
women whom it is worth a great deal to have 
as friends. As our intimacy with them ripens, 
their lives open out like sweet flowers, disclos- 
ing rich beauty to our sight, and pouring fra- 
grance upon our spirits. A true and great 
friendship is one of earth's richest and best 
blessings. It is ever breathing songs into our 
hearts, kindling aspirations and hopes, starting 
impulses of good, teaching holy lessons, and 
shedding all manner of benign influences upon 
our lives. But the friendship of Christ does 
infinitely more than this for us. It purifies our 
sinful lives; it makes us brave and strong; 
it inspires us ever to the best and noblest ser- 
vice. Its influence, perpetually brooding over 
us, woos out the winsomest graces of mind and 
spirit. The richest, the sweetest, and the only 
perennial and never failing, fountain of good in 
this world, is the personal, experimental knowl- 
edge of Christ. 

That Christ should condescend thus to give 
to us sinful men his pure, divine friendship is 



FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 27 

the greatest wonder of the world ; but there 
is no doubt of the fact. No human friendship 
can ever be half so close and intimate as that 
which the lowliest of us may enjoy with our 
Saviour. If we but realize our privileges, the 
enriching that will come to our lives through 
this glorious relationship will be better than all 
gold and gems. 

"And can a thing so sweet, 
And can such heavenly condescension, be? 
Ah ! wherefore tarry thus our lingering feet? 
It can be none but Thee. 

There is the gracious ear 
That never yet was deaf to sinner's call: 
We will not linger, and we dare not fear, 

But kneel, and tell Thee all. 

We tell Thee of our sin, 
Only half loathed, only half wished away; 
And those clear eyes of love that look within, 

Rebuke us, seem to say, — 

' Oh ! bought with My own blood, 
Mine own, for whom My precious life I gave, 
Am I so little prized, remembered, loved, 

By those I died to save ? ' 



28 FRIENDSHIP WITH CHRIST. 

And under that deep gaze 
Sorrow awakes. We kneel with eyelids wet, 
And marvel, as with Peter at the gate, 

That we could so forget. 

We tell Thee of our care, 
Of the sore burden pressing day by day; 
And in the light and pity of Thy face 

The burden melts away. 

We breathe our secret wish, 
The importunate longing which no man may see 
We ask it humbly, or, more restful still, 

We leave it all to Thee. 

The thorns are turned to flowers ; 
All dark perplexities seem light and fair ; 
A mist is lifted from the heavy hours, 

And Thou art everywhere." 



CHAPTER III. 

HAVING CHRIST IN US. 

" As some rare perfume in a vase of clay 
Pervades it with a fragrance not its own, 
So when Thou dwellest in a mortal soul, 

All heaven's own sweetness seems around it thrown." 

The Scriptures make a great deal of having 
Christ in men, if they are Christians. Christ 
himself speaks of abiding in his people, and of 
his life as flowing through them as the life of 
the vine flows through its branches. The figure 
of the body is used, believers being members of 
Christ's body, and deriving all their life from 
him. The idea of a building or temple with 
the divine Spirit as indwelling guest, is also 
employed to represent the Christian's relation 
to his Lord. Then, St. Paul says without fig- 
ure, " Christ liveth in me," and speaks of being 
"filled with the Spirit," " filled with all the ful- 
ness of God," as a possible and most desirable 

29 



30 HA VING CHRIST IN US. 

attainment of Christian experience. From the 
many forms in which this truth is represented 
in the Scriptures, it is evident that the ideal 
Christian life is one that is thoroughly pervaded, 
saturated, so to speak, with the life and spirit 
of Christ. Far more certainly is implied than 
mere divine influence over us or upon us from 
without, such influence as a friend exerts over a 
friend, a teacher over a pupil, or even a mother 
over a child. To become a Christian is to have 
a new spiritual life enter the soul, as when a 
seed with its living germ is planted in the dead 
soil : to grow as a Christian is to have this new 
life increase in strength and energy, making 
daily conquests over the old nature, extending 
itself, and expelling the evil by the force of its 
own good, and ultimately bringing the affec- 
tions, feelings, desires, and all the activities, 
even the thoughts of the heart, into subjection 
to Christ. 

There is a great difference between having 
Christ outside and having him in us. If he is 
only outside, we may listen for his words, and 
try to obey his voice, following where he leads ; 



HA VING CHRIST IN US. 3 1 

and we may gaze upon his loveliness, and seek 
to copy it in our lives ; but our following and 
obeying will be under the impulse of duty only, 
with no inward constraint; and our striving after 
the divine likeness will be like the carving of a 
figure in cold marble rather than the growing 
up of a life from within by its own vital force 
and energy into fulness of power and beauty. 

Only as we get Christ into our hearts, and 
let him dwell in us by his Spirit, shall we reach 
the true ideal of Christian life and experience. 
Then shall we do right, not by direction of 
written rule, but by the promptings of our re- 
generated nature, the Christ indwelling. Then 
shall our dull lives be transfigured by the light 
that shines in our hearts, and slowly changes 
all the earthliness to heavenliness. Then shall 
the features of the divine image come out little 
by little as the new life within forces itself 
through the dull crust of the old nature, until 
at length the full beauty of Christ shines where 
once only sin's marred visage was seen. 

Christ within makes an inner joy that all 
the darkness of earth's trials cannot quench. 



32 HA VING CHRIST IN US. 

There are great diversities of experience in 
sorrow. Some when this world's lights are 
quenched are left in utter gloom, like a house 
without lamp or candle or flickering firelight 
when the sun goes down. Others, in similar 
darkness, stand radiant in the deep shadows : 
they have bright light within themselves. 
Christ dwells in them, and the beams from his 
blessed life turn night into day. There is an 
ancient picture of the Christ-child in the stable 
which illustrates this experience. The child 
lies upon the straw, the mother is bending over 
him, the wondering shepherds are near, and in 
the background are the cattle. It is night, and 
there is only one feeble lantern in the place ; 
but from the infant child a radiance streams 
which lights up all the rude scene. So it is in 
sorrow-darkened hearts when Christ truly dwells 
within. The light streaming from him who is 
the light of the world, in whom is no darkness, 
illumines all the gloom of grief. Indeed, when 
Christ dwells in the heart, sorrow is a blessing, 
because it reveals beauties and joys which could 
not have been seen in the earthly light. It is 



HAVING CHRIST IN US. 33 

one of the blessings of night, that without it 
we could never see the stars : it is one of the 
blessings of trial, that without it we could never 
see the precious comforts of God. 

" Were there no night, we could not read the stars, 

The heavens would turn into a blinding glare ; 
Freedom is best seen through prison-bars, 

And rough seas make the haven passing fair; 
We cannot measure joys but by their loss ; 

When blessings fade away, we see them then ; 
Our richest clusters grow around the cross, 

And in the night-time angels sing to men." 

When Christ is within us, sorrow is a time of 
revelation. It is like the cloud that crowned 
the summit of the holy mountain into which 
Moses climbed, and by which he was hidden so 
long from the eyes of the people. While folded 
in the clouds, he was looking upon God's face. 
Sorrow's cloud hides the world, and wraps the 
wondering one in thick darkness ; but in the 
darkness, Christ himself unveils the splendor 
and glory of his face. There are many who 
never saw the beauty of Christ, and never knew 



34 HA VING CHRIST IN US. 

him in the intimacy of a personal friendship, 
till they saw him, and learned to talk with him 
as friend with friend, in the hour of sorrow's 
darkness. When the lamps of earth went out, 
Christ's face appeared. 

But Christ is not a friend for sorrow alone. 
We do not have to wait till trial comes to enjoy 
his love, and be blessed by his indwelling. His 
light shines in many places where the bright- 
ness of other lamps still beams. Yet, even 
there, it does not shine in vain. Christ within 
has a deep meaning to the joyous as well as to 
the sad. All blessings are richer, all gladness 
is sweeter, all love is purer, because w.e have 
Christ. Peace in the heart makes every earth- 
ly beauty lovelier. Indeed, all human gladness 
is but a vanishing picture, a passing illusion, 
unless the joy of the Lord be its spring and 
source. 

What confidence it gives to us in our enjoy- 
ment of the transient and uncertain things of 
earth, to know that these are not our only pos- 
sessions ; that if we lose them, we shall still be 
rich and secure, because we shall still have 



HAVING CHRIST IN US. 35 

Christ. All day the stars are in the sky. We 
cannot see them in the glare of the sunshine ; 
but it is something, surely, to know that they 
are there, and that, when it grows dark, they 
will shine out. So, amid abounding human joy, 
it is a precious confidence to know that there 
are divine comforts veiled, invisible to our eyes 
in the sunshine about us, which will flash out 
the moment the earthly joy is darkened. 

" I wonder if the world is full 
Of other secrets beautiful, 
As little guessed, as hard to see, 
As this sweet, starry mystery ? 
Do angels veil themselves in space, 
And make the sun their hiding-place? 
Do white wings flash as spirits go 
On heavenly errands to and fro, 
While we, down-looking, never guess 
How near our lives they crowd and press ? 
If so, at life's set we may see 
Into the dusk steal noiselessly 
Sweet faces that we used to know, 
Dear eyes like stars that softly glow, 
Dear hands stretched out to point the way, — 
And deem the night more fair than day." 



36 HA VING CHRIST IN US. 

To the happiest heart that really makes room 
for Christ within, there is always the assurance 
of a world of spiritual blessings, hopes, and 
joys, lying concealed in the lustre of human 
gladness, like stars in the noonday sky, but 
ready to pour their brightness upon us the 
moment the night falls with its shadows. 
Whether, therefore, the earthly light be bright 
or dark, Christ in the heart gives great blessed- 
ness and peace. 

But there is another way in which Christ 
within us will be made manifest. If we have 
this divine indwelling, we should also have in 
ever-increasing measure in all our life the gen- 
tle and loving Spirit of the Master. We should 
not claim to have Christ in us, if, in our con- 
duct and speech, in our disposition and tem- 
per, and in our relations with our fellow-men, 
there is none of the mind of Christ. If Christ 
truly be in us, he cannot long be hidden in our 
hearts without manifestation, but there will be 
a gradual transformation of our outer life into 
Christlikeness. As he lived, we will live ; as 
he ministered to others, we will minister ; as he 



HAVING CHRIST IN US. 37 

was holy, we will be holy ; as he was patient, 
thoughtful, unselfish, gentle, and kind, so will 
we be. Christ came to our world to pour divine 
kindness on weary, needy, perishing human 
lives. Christ truly in our hearts should send 
us out on the same mission. And there is need 
everywhere for love's ministry. The world to- 
day needs nothing more than true Christlikeness 
in those who bear Christ's name, and represent 
him. Christ went about doing good : he 
sought to put hope and cheer into all he met. 
If Christ be in us, we should strive to perpetu- 
ate this Christ-ministry of love in this world. 
Hearts are breaking with sorrow, men are 
bowing under burdens too heavy for them, duty 
is too large, the battles are too hard : it is 
our mission, if Christ be in us, to do for these 
weary, overwrought, defeated, and despairing 
ones what Christ himself would do if he were 
standing where we stand. He wants us to 
represent him ; and he fills us with his Spirit, 
that we may be able to scatter the blessings of 
helpfulness and gladness all about us. Yet, 
one of the saddest things about life is, that, 



$8 HA VI NG CHRIST IN US. 

with so much power to help others by kindli- 
ness of word and kindliness of act, many of us 
pass through the world in silence or with folded 
hands. Silence has ofttimes a better ministry 
than speech. It were well very frequently if we 
did not speak where now we speak with quick 
and glib tongue. There are words that pain and 
wound the heart. There is speech that is most 
cruel. There are tongues that had better been 
born dumb than to have the gift of speech, and 
employ it as they do. " Speech is silvern, 
silence is golden," says the old proverb; and 
there are homes and lives in which it were well 
if fewer words were uttered. But there are also 
silences that are cruel. We walk beside our 
friends whose hearts are heavy, who are bear- 
ing burdens that well-nigh crush them, who are 
yearning for cheer and sympathy and love : we 
talk incessantly with them of other things, — of 
business, of society, of books, of a thousand 
things, — but never speak the sweet word for 
which they are hungering. If the Spirit of 
Christ is in us, it should prompt us to speak 



HA VING CHRIST IN US. 39 

such words as Christ himself would speak if he 
were in our place. 

Surely we should learn the lesson of gentle, 
thoughtful kindness to those we love, and to all 
we meet in life's busy ways ; and we should 
show the kindness, too, while their tired feet 
walk in life's toilsome paths, and not wait to 
bring flowers for their coffins, or to speak words 
of cheer when their ears are closed, and their 
hearts are stilled, and it is too late to give them 
comfort and joy. 

If we have the true Christ-spirit in our hearts, 
it will work out in transfigured life and in Christ- 
ly ministry ; it will lead to the brightening of 
one little spot, at least, on this big earth. There 
are a few people whom God calls to do great 
things for him ; but the best things most of us 
can do in this world is just to live out a real, 
simple, consecrated, Christian life in our al- 
lotted place. Thus, in our little measure, we 
shall repeat the life of Christ himself, showing 
men some feeble reflection of his sweet and 
loving face, and doing in our poor way a few 



40 HA VING CHRIST IN US. 

of the beautiful things he would do if he were 
here himself. Whittier tells us, — 

" The dear Lord's best interpreters 
Are humble, human souls : 
The gospel of a life 

Is more than books or scrolls.'* 



CHAPTER IV. 

COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 

" Heaven whispers wisdom to the wayside flower, 
Bidding it use its own peculiar dower, 
And bloom its best within its little span. 
We must each do not what we will, but can, 
Nor have we duty to exceed our power." 

Nothing is more striking to a close observer 
of human life than the almost infinite variety 
of character which exists among those who 
profess to be Christians. No two are alike. 
Even those who are alike revered for their 
saintliness, who alike seem to wear the image 
of their Lord, whose lives are alike attractive 
in their beauty, show the widest diversity in 
individual traits, and in the cast and mould of 
their character. Yet all are sitting before the 
same model ; all are striving after the same 
ideal ; all are imitators of the same blessed life. 
There is but one standard of true Christian 

41 



42 COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 

character, — the likeness of Christ. It is into 
his imasfe that we are all in the end to be 

o 

transformed, and it is toward his holy beauty 
that we are always to strive. We are to live 
as he lived : we are to copy his features into 
our lives. Wherever, in all the world, true 
disciples of Christ are found, they are trying 
to reproduce in themselves the likeness of their 
Master. 

Why is it, then, that there is such variety 
of character and disposition among those who 
aim to follow the same example ? Why are not 
all just alike? If a thousand artists were to 
paint the picture of the same person, their 
pictures, if faithful, would show the same feat- 
ures. But a thousand persons seek to copy 
into their own lives the likeness of Christ, and 
the result is a thousand different representa- 
tions of that likeness, no two the same. Why 
is there this strange diversity in Christian lives, 
when all have before them the same original 
type ? 

One reason for this is that God does not 
bestow upon all his children the same gifts, the 



COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 43 

same natural qualities. The Creator loves 
variety, as all his works attest : no two ani- 
mals are precisely alike in every feature ; no 
two plants are exactly similar in their struct- 
ure ; no two human lives in all the race are 
identical in all respects ; and divine grace does 
not recast all dispositions in the same mould. 
When gold is minted, each coin of a kind is 
stamped by the same die ; and a million coins 
of the same value will all be precisely alike. 
But life is not minted as gold is. Grace does 
not transform Peter into a John, nor Paul into 
a Barnabas, nor Luther into a Melanchthon. 
Regeneration does not make busy, bustling 
Martha quiet and reposeful, like her sister 
Mary ; nor does it change Mary's calm, restful 
spirit into the anxious and distracted activity of 
Martha. It makes them both friends of Jesus, 
devoted to him in love and loyalty and service ; 
but it leaves each of them herself in all her indi- 
vidual characteristics. It makes them both like 
Christ in holiness, in consecration, in heavenly 
longings ; but it does not touch those features 
which give to each one her personal identity. 



44 COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 

You drop twenty different seeds in the same 
garden-bed, and they spring up into twenty 
different kinds of plants, from the delicate 
mignonette to the flaunting sunflower. No 
skill of gardening can make all the plants alike. 
The fuchsia will always be a fuchsia, the rose 
will always be a rose, the geranium will always 
be a geranium. In the same soil, with the same 
sunshine and rain, and the same culture, each 
grows up after its kind. In like manner divine 
grace does not make all Christian women either 
Marys or Marthas, or Dorcases or Priscillas, 
nor all Christian men either Johns or Peters, 
or Barnabases or Aquilas ; but each believer 
grows up into his own peculiar self. Regen- 
eration neither adds to nor takes from our 
natural gifts ; and since there is infinite variety 
in the endowments and qualities originally 
bestowed upon different individuals, there is 
the same variety in the company of Christ's 
followers. 

Another reason for this diversity among 
Christians is because even the best and holiest 
saints realize but a little of the image of Christ, 



COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 45 

have only one little fraction and fragment of 
his likeness in their souls. In one of his fol- 
lowers, there is some one feature of Christ's 
blessed life that appears ; in another, there is 
another feature ; in a third, still a different 
feature. One seeks to copy Christ's gentle- 
ness, another his patience, another his sym- 
pathy, another his meekness. A thousand be- 
lievers may all, in a certain sense, be like 
Christ, and yet no two of them have, or con- 
sciously strive after, just the same features of 
Christ in their souls. The reason is, that the 
character of Christ is so great, so majestic, so 
glorious, that it is impossible to copy all of it 
into any one little human life ; and again, each 
human character is so imperfect and limited, 
that it cannot reach out in all directions after 
the boundless and infinite character of Christ. 

It is as if a great company of artists were 
sent to paint each one a picture of the Alps. 
Each chooses his own point of observation, 
and selects the particular feature of the Alps 
he desires to paint. They all bring back their 
pictures ; but lo ! no two of them are alike. 



46 COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 

One canvas presents a sweet valley-scene, with 
its quiet stream and bright flowers ; another 
has for its central figure a wild crag among the 
clouds ; another a snow-crowned peak, glitter- 
ing in the sunshine ; another a rushing torrent 
leaping over the rocks ; another a mighty gla- 
cier. Yet no one of the artists can say that 
the pictures of the others are not true. They 
are probably as true as his own, but there is 
not one of them all that has painted the whole 
Alps. Each one has put upon his canvas only 
the little part of the magnificent scene which 
he saw. 

So it is with those who are striving to repro- 
duce the likeness of Christ in their own lives. 
A thousand Christians, earnest and sincere, 
begin to follow him and to imitate him. One 
seizes upon one feature which to him seems to 
be the central beauty of Christ's character ; 
another, looking upon the same glorious person 
with different eyes, or from the view-point of 
different experiences, sees another feature alto- 
gether, and calls it Christ ; each one strives to 
copy the particular elements of Christly char- 



COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 47 

acter which he sees. No two reproductions are 
precisely the same : no two have the same con- 
ception of Christlikeness. Yet no one can say- 
that the others are not true Christians, that 
they have not also seen the Lord, and have not 
faithfully copied into their own lives what they 
saw of him. 

The truth is, the Alps as a whole are too 
varied, too vast, for any one artist to take into 
his perspective, and paint upon his canvas. 
The best he can do is to portray some one or 
two features, — the features his eye can see 
from where he stands. And Christ is too great 
in his infinite perfections, in the majestic sweep 
of his character, in the many-sidedness of his 
beauty, for any one of his finite followers to 
copy the whole of his image into his own little 
life. The most that any of us can do is to get 
into our own soul one little fragment of the 
wonderful likeness of our Lord. 

Thus it is that there is such variety in the 
individual dispositions of Christians, while all 
seek to follow the same copy, and while all may 
be equally faithful in their noble endeavors. 



48 COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 

The practical lesson from this fact is, that no 
one follower of Christ should condemn another 
because the other's spiritual life is not of the 
same stamp as his own. Let not Martha, 
busied with her much serving, running every- 
where to missionary meetings, or to visit the 
sick and the poor, find fault with Mary in her 
quiet devotion, peaceful, thoughtful, gentle, lov- 
ing, because she does not abound in the same 
activities. Nor let Mary in her turn judge 
Martha, and call her piety superficial. Let her 
honor it rather as the copy of another feature 
of the infinite loveliness of Christ. 

There is the greatest diversity in the modes 
of service rendered by different followers of 
Christ. All may be alike loyal and acceptable, 
and yet no two be the same. Each follows 
Christ along his own path, and does his work in 
his own way. Whatever we may say about the 
sweetness and beauty of Mary, as we see her 
sitting in such peaceful attitude at the feet of 
her Lord, we must not forget that it was no^ 
Martha's service which Jesus reproved, but her 
anxious, fretful worry. Her service was im- 



COPYIXG BUT A FRAGMEXT. 49 

portant, was even essential to our Lord's own 
comfort, and to her true and hospitable enter- 
tainment of him in her home. The Marys are 
very lovely ; and every woman should have the 
Mary-spirit of peace, and should sit much, 
Mary-like, at the Master's feet to hear his 
words, in order to be fitted for the best ser- 
vice. But Martha's work must be done too : 
no true Christian woman will neglect her duties 
of service in her privileges of devotion. 

" Yea, Lord. Yet some must serve. 
Not all with tranquil heart, 
Even at thy dear feet, 
Wrapped in devotion sweet, 
May sit apart. 

Yea, Lord. Yet some must bear 

The burden of the day, 
Its labor and its heat, 
While others at thy feet 

May muse and pray. 

Yea, Lord. Yet some must do 

Life's daily task-work : some 
Who fain would sing, must toil 
Amid earth's dust and moil, 

While lips are dumb. 






50 COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 

Yea, Lord. Yet man must earn, 

And woman bake the bread ; 
And some must watch and wake 
Early for others' sake, 

Who pray instead. 

Yea, Lord. Yet even thou 

Hast need of earthly care. 
I bring the bread and wine 
To thee, O Guest divine ! 

Be this my prayer." 

Let each of these good women follow the 
Master closely, see as much as possible of the 
infinite loveliness of his character, and copy into 
her own life all she can see ; yet let her not 
imagine that she has seen or copied all of 
Christ, but let her look at every other Christian 
woman's life with reverence, as bearing another 
little fragment of the same divine likeness. Let 
every man do earnestly and well the particular 
work which he is fitted and called to do, but 
let him not imagine that he is doing the only 
kind of work which God wants to have done in 
this world ; rather let him look upon every 
faithful servant who does a different work as 



COPYING BUT A FRAGMENT. 5 1 

doing a part equally important and equally ac- 
ceptable to the Master. 

The bird praises God by singing; the flower 
pays its tribute in fragrant incense as its cen- 
ser swings in the breeze ; the tree shakes down 
fruits from its bending boughs ; the stars pour 
out their silver beams to gladden the earth ; 
the clouds give their blessing in gentle rain : 
yet all with equal faithfulness fulfil their mis- 
sion. So among Christ's redeemed servants, 
one serves by incessant toil in the home, caring 
for a large family ; another by silent example 
as a sufferer, patient and uncomplaining ; an- 
other with the pen, sending forth words that 
inspire, help, cheer, and bless ; another by the 
living voice, whose eloquence moves men, and 
starts impulses to better, grander living ; an- 
other by the ministry of sweet song ; another 
by sitting in quiet peace at Jesus' feet, drink- 
ing in his spirit, and then shining as a gentle 
and silent light, or pouring out the fragrance 
of love like a lowly and unconscious flower ; yet 
each and all of these may be serving Christ 
acceptably, hearing at the close of each day the 
whispered word, "Well done." 



CHAPTER V. 

THY WILL, NOT MINE. 

" Our lives we cut on a curious plan, 
Shaping them, as it were, for man ; 
But God, with better art than we, 
Shapes them for eternity." 

Many people only half read their Bibles, 
They skim the surface, and fail to get the full, 
deep meaning of the golden words. They get 
but half-truths, and half-truths ofttimes are 
misleading. Even inspired sentences standing 
alone do not always give the full and final word 
on the doctrine or the duty which they present : 
frequently it is necessary to bring other in- 
spired sentences, and set them side by side with 
the first, in order to get the truth in its full, 
rounded completeness. When the Tempter 
quoted certain Scriptures to our Lord, he an- 
swered, " It is written again." The plausible 
word in its isolation was but a fragment, and 
52 



THY WILL, NOT MINE. 53 

other words must be brought to stand beside 
it to give it its true meaning. 

Many mistaken conceptions of the doctrine 
of prayer come from this superficial reading of 
the Scriptures. One person finds the words, 
"Ask, and it shall be given you ; " and, search- 
ing no farther, he concludes that he has a key 
for the unlocking of all God's storehouses ; he 
can get any thing he wants. But he soon dis- 
covers that the answers do not come as he 
expected ; and he becomes discouraged, and 
perhaps loses faith in prayer. The simple fact 
is, that this word of Christ standing alone does 
not contain the full truth about prayer. " It is 
written again." He must read more deeply, 
and, gathering all our Lord's sayings on this 
subject, combine them in one complete state- 
ment. There are conditions to this general 
promise. The word "ask" must be carefully 
defined by other Scriptures ; and, when this is 
done, the statement stands true, infallible, and 
faithful. 

One of the ofttimes forgotten conditions of 
all true and acceptable prayer is the final refer- 



54 THY WILL, NOT MINE. 

ence of every desire and importunity to the 
divine will. After all our faith, sincerity, and 
importunity, our requests must still be left to 
God, with confidence that he will do what is 
best. For how do we know that the thing we 
ask would really be a blessing to us if it came ? 
Surely God knows better than we can know ; 
and the only sure and safe thing to do is to 
express our desire with earnestness and faith, 
and then leave the matter in his hands. It is 
thus that we are taught, in all the Scriptures, 
to make our prayers to God. 

But do we quite understand this ? Is it not 
something far more profound than many of us 
think ? It is not mere silent acquiescence after 
the request has been refused : such acquies- 
cence may be stoical and obstinate, or it may 
be despairing and hopeless ; and neither temper 
is the true one. To ask according to God's 
will is to have the confidence, when we make 
our prayer, that God will grant it unless in his 
wisdom he knows that refusal or some different 
answer than the one we seek will be better for 
us ; in which case we pledge ourselves to take 



THY WILL, NOT MINE. 55 

the refusal or the other answer as the right 
thing for us. 

If we understood this, it would remove many 
of the perplexities which lie about the doctrine 
of prayer and its answer. We pray earnestly, 
and do not receive what we. ask. In our bitter 
disappointment we say, " Has not God prom- 
ised, that, if we ask, we shall receive ? " Yes ; 
but look a moment at the history of prayer. 
Jesus himself prayed that the cup of his agony 
— the betrayal, the trial, the ignominy, the 
crucifixion, and all that nameless and myste- 
rious woe that lay back of these obvious pains 
and sorrows — might pass, and yet it did not 
pass. Paul prayed that the thorn in his flesh 
might be removed, yet it was not removed. 
All along the centuries, mothers have been 
agonizing in prayer over their dying children, 
crying to God that they might live ; and even 
while they were praying, the shadow deepened 
over them, and the little hearts fluttered into 
the stillness of death. All through the Chris- 
tian years, crushed souls, under heavy crosses 
of sorrow or shame, have been crying, " How 



56 THY WILL, NOT MINE. 

long, Lord ! how long ? " and the only an- 
swer has been a little more added to the bur- 
den, another thorn in the crown. 

Are not our prayers answered, then, at all ? 
Certainly they are. Not a word that goes faith- 
winged up to God fails to receive attention and 
answer. But ofttimes the answer that comes 
is not relief, but the spirit of acquiescence in 
God's will. The prayer many, many times only 
draws the trembling suppliant closer to God. 
The cup did not pass from the Master, but his 
will was brought into such perfect accord with 
the Father's, that his piteous cries for relief 
died away in a refrain of sweet, peaceful yield- 
ing. The thorn was not removed, but Paul 
was enabled to keep it and forget it in glad 
acquiescence in his Lord's refusal. The child 
did not recover, but the king was helped to 
rise, wash away his tears, and worship God. 

We are not to think, then, that every burden 
we ask God to remove, he will surely remove, 
nor that every favor we crave, he will bestow. 
He has never promised this. "This is the 
confidence that we have in him, that, if we ask 



THY WILL, NOT MINE. $? 

any thing according to his will, he heareth us." 
Into the very heart of the prayer which our 
Lord gave, saying, " After this manner pray 
ye," he put the petition, "Thy will be done." 
Listening at the garden-gate to the Master's 
own most earnest supplication, we hear, amid 
all the agonies of his wrestling, the words, 
"Nevertheless, not as I will, but as thou wilt." 

The supreme wish in our praying should not, 
then, be merely to get the relief we desire. 
This would be to put our own will before God's, 
and to leave no place for his wisdom to decide 
what is best. We are to say, " This desire is 
very dear to me : I would like to have it 
granted ; yet I cannot decide for myself, for 
I am not wise enough, and I put it into Thy 
hand. If it be Thy will, grant me my request : 
if not, graciously withhold it from me, and help 
me sweetly to acquiesce, for Thy way must be 
the best." 

For example : your health is broken. It is 
right to pray for its restoration ; but running 
all through your most, earnest supplication, 
should be the songful, trustful, "Nevertheless, 



58 THY WILL, NOT MINE. 

not as I will, but as thou wilt." You are a 
mother, and are struggling in prayer over a 
sick child. God will never blame you for the 
strength of your maternal affection, nor for 
the clasping, clinging love that holds your dar- 
ling in your bosom and pleads to keep it. Love 
is right : mother-love is right, and, of all things 
on earth, is likest the love of God's own heart. 
Prayer is right, too, no matter how intense and 
importunate ; yet, amid all your agony of de- 
sire, it should be the supreme, the ruling wish, 
subduing and softening all of nature's wild an- 
guish, and bringing every thought and feeling 
into subjection, that God's will may be done. 

" Not as I will : " — the sound grows sweet 
Each time my lips the words repeat. 
" Not as I will : " — the darkness feels 
More safe than light, when this thought steals 
Like whispered voice to calm and bless 
All unrest and all loneliness. 
" Not as I will," because the One 
Who loved us first and best has gone 
Before us on the road, and still 
For us must all his lbve fulfil, — 
" Not as we will." 



THY WILL, NOT MINE. 59 

The groundwork of this acquiescence is our 
confidence in the love and wisdom of God. He 
is our Father, with all a father's tender affec- 
tion, and yet with infinite wisdom, so that he 
can neither err nor be unkind. He has a plan 
for us. He carries us in his heart and in his 
thought. The things we, in our ignorance, 
desire, might in the end work us great ill ; the 
things from which we shrink may carry rich 
blessings for us ; so we should not dare to 
choose for ourselves what our life experiences 
shall be. The best thing possible for us in this 
world is always what God wills for us. To have 
our own way rather than his, is to mar the 
beauty of his thought concerning us. 

The highest attainment in prayer is this lay- 
ing of all our requests at God's feet for his dis- 
posal. The highest reach of faith is loving, 
intelligent consecration of all our life to the 
will of God. 

" Laid on thine altar, O my Lord divine ! 
Accept this gift to-day, for Jesus' sake. 
I have no jewels to adorn thy shrine, 
Nor any world-famed sacrifice to make : 



60 THY WILL, NOT MINE. 

But here I bring within my trembling hand 

This will of mine, — a thing that seemeth small; 

And thou alone, O Lord ! canst understand 
How, when I yield thee this, I yield mine all. 

Hidden therein, thy searching gaze can see 

Struggles of passion, visions of delight, 
All that I have or am or fain would be, — 

Deep loves, fond hopes, and longings infinite. 
It hath been wet with tears, and dimmed with sighs, 

Clenched in my grasp till beauty it hath none : 
Now from thy footstool, where it vanquished lies, 

The prayer ascendeth, * May thy will be done.' 

Take it, O Father ! ere my courage fail, 

And merge it so in thine own will, that e'en 
If in some desperate hour my cries prevail, 

And thou give back my gift, it may have been 
So changed, so purified, so fair have grown, 

So one with thee, so filled with peace divine, 
I may not know or feel it as mine own, 

But, gaining back my will, may find it thine." 

When a beautiful life hangs trembling in the 
balance, we should not, with all our loving 
yearning, dare to choose whether it shall be 
spared to us, or carried home. When some 



THY WILL, NOT MINE. 6l 

great hope of our heart is about to be taken 
from us, we should not dare settle the question 
whether we shall lose it, or keep it. We do 
not know that it would be best. At least, we 
know that God has a perfect plan for our life, 
marked out by his infinite wisdom ; and surely 
we should not say that what we, with our lim- 
ited wisdom, might prefer, would be better than 
what he wants us to be. 



CHAPTER VI. 

GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 

God never gives all he has to give. The 
time never comes when he has nothing more to 
bestow. We never reach the best in divine 
blessings : there is always something better yet 
to come. Every door that opens into a treasury 
of love shows another door into another treas- 
ury beyond. The unrevealed is ever better 
than the revealed. We need not fear that we 
shall ever come to the end of God's goodness, 
or to any experience for which he will have no 
blessing ready. 

Yet the divine goodness is not emptied out 

in heaps at our feet when we first start in 

faith's pathway ; rather it is kept in reserve for 

us until we need it, and is then disbursed. 

The Scriptures speak of God's great goodness 

as laid up for them that fear him. This is the 
62 



GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 63 

divine method, both in providence and in grace. 
We think of one gathering food in bright sum- 
mer days, when the harvests are golden, when 
the fruits hang on bending boughs, when the 
hillsides are purple with their vintage, and lay- 
ing up for winter's use, when the fields shall 
be bleak, and the trees and vines bare. Or we 
think of a father gathering riches, and securing 
them in safe deposits or investments for his 
children when they shall grow up. So God 
has laid up goodness for his people. 

God laid up goodness in the creation and 
preparation of the earth. Ages before man was 
made, God was fitting up this globe to be his 
home, storing in mountain, hill, and plain, in 
water, air, and soil, and in all nature's treasuries, 
supplies for every human need. We think, 
for example, of the vast beds of coal laid up 
among earth's strata, ages and ages since, in 
order that our homes might be warmed and 
brightened in these later centuries ; of the iron, 
silver, gold, and other metals secreted in the 
veins of the rocks ; of the medicinal and heal- 
ing virtues stored in leaf, root, fruit, bark, and 



64 GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 

mineral ; and of all the latent forces and prop- 
erties lodged in nature, to be called out from 
time to time to minister to human wants. No 
sane and sensible man will say that all this was 
accidental : it was divine forethought that laid 
up all this goodness for the welfare of God's 
children. 

The same is true of spiritual provision. In 
the covenant of his love, in the infinite ages of 
the past, God laid up goodness for men. Re- 
demption was no afterthought : it was planned 
before the foundation of the world. Then 
Christ, in his incarnation, obedience, sufferings, 
and death, laid up goodness for his people. 
We sometimes forget, while we pillow our 
heads on the promises of God, and rest secure 
in the atonement, and enjoy all the blessings 
of redemption and the hopes of glory, what 
these things cost our Redeemer. In those long 
years of poverty, those sharp days of tempta- 
tion, those keen hours of agony, he was laying 
up treasures of blessing and glory for us. 
There is not a hope or a joy of our Christian 
faith that does not come to us out of the treas- 



GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 6$ 

ures stored away by our Redeemer during the 
years of his humiliation and the hours of his 
agony. 

But all this goodness was laid tip. The 
treasures were not all opened at the beginning. 
This is true, both in nature and in grace. So 
far as we know, there has been nothing new 
created since the beginning, but there has been 
a continual succession of developments of hid- 
den treasures and powers to meet the new 
needs of the multiplying and advancing race. 
Thus, when fuel began to grow scarce, the vast 
coal-beds were discovered. They were not 
created then for the emergency : ages before, 
they had been "laid up," but. the storehouse 
was only then opened to meet the world's want. 
So, when material for light was in danger of 
exhaustion, the reservoirs of oil, long hidden 
in reserve, were opened. And in these recent 
days, men are discovering the powers of electri- 
city, — not a new creation, but an energy which 
has flowed silent and unperceived through all 
space from the beginning, only to become 
available in these later days. Human need is 



66 • GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 

the key that unlocks the storehouses of God's 
provision for the children of men. 

In spiritual things, the method is the same. 
Take the Bible for illustration. It is a great 
treasury of reserved blessing. There has not 
been a chapter, a line, a word, added to it since 
the pen of inspiration wrote the final Amen ; 
yet every new generation finds new things in 
the Holy Book. This is true in all individual 
experience. As children we study the Bible, 
and con its words ; but many of the precious 
sentences have no meaning for us. The light, 
the comfort, or the help is there, but we do 
not see it : indeed, we cannot see it until we 
have larger experience, and a fuller sense of 
need. For a time the rich truths of the Bible 
seem to hide away, refusing to disclose to us 
their meaning. We read them in sunny youth, 
but do not discover the blessing or help that is 
in them. Then we move on into the midst of 
the struggles, trials, and conflicts of real life, 
and new senses begin to reveal themselves in 
the familiar sentences. Promises that seemed 
pale before, as if written with invisible ink, 



GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 67 

begin to glow with rich meaning. Experience 
reveals their preciousness. Every Christian 
who has lived many years, and passed through 
trials and struggles, knows how texts with 
which he has been familiar from childhood, but 
in which he has never before found any special 
help, all at once, in some new experience of 
need or trial, flash out, like newly lighted lamps, 
and pour bright beams upon his path. The 
light was not new : it had shone there all the 
while ; but he could not see it until now be- 
cause other lights were shining about him, 
obscuring this one. 

Most personal knowledge of the Bible has to 
be learned in this way. The words lie in our 
memory, and the years come and go, with their 
experiences. The light of human joy wanes ; 
health gives way ; disappointment comes ; sor- 
row breaks in upon us ; some human trust fails ; 
the sunlight that flowed about us yesterday 
has gone out, and our path lies in darkness. 
Then the words of God that have lain so long 
in memory, without apparent brightness, flash 
out like heavenly lamps, and pour their wel- 



68 GOB'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 

come radiance all about us. Did those words 
have no light in them before ? Yes : the lamps 
were shining all the while ; but our eyes did 
not discern the brightness until this world's 
lamps went out, and it grew dark about us. 
The goodness was laid up, reserved until we 
needed it. 

God's storehouses of spiritual truth never are 
opened to us until we really need their blessing. 
They are placed, so to speak, along our life- 
path, the right supply at the right point. By 
the plan of God, in every desert there are oases ; 
at the foot of each sharp, steep hill, there are 
alpenstocks for climbing ; in every dark gorge, 
there are lighted lamps ; at every stream, there 
is a bridge. But we find none of these till we 
come to the place where we need them. And 
why should we ? Will it not be soon enough to 
see the bridge when we stand by the stream ? 
Will it not be soon enough, when it grows dark, 
for the lamps to shine out ? Will it not be soon 
enough, when the larder is empty, for God to 
send bread ? 

The storehouse in which God's goodness is 



GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 69 

laid up is found always at the point of need. 
Take a promise or two for illustration : " In 
the time of trouble, he shall hide, me in his 
pavilion." It is very clear that we cannot get 
this promise when we are in joy and safety, but 
only when we are in peril. " When thou pass- 
eth through the waters, I will be with thee." 
This goodness is laid up in the midst of the 
wild waves, and cannot be found in any sunny 
field. " Leave thy fatherless children ; I will 
preserve them alive : and let thy widows trust 
in me." This promise can never come to the 
tender wife when she leans on the strong arm 
of her husband, nor to the happy children when 
they cluster about the living, loving father's 
knee. It can be found only by the dark coffin 
or by the grave of love : it lies hidden amid 
the desolation of sorrow. Thus, the divine 
treasuries are placed in the midst of the very 
needs themselves, and we cannot get the help 
or the comfort until we stand within the circle 
of the need. 

Many a mother, when she reads how some 
other Christian mother bore herself with sweet 



70 GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 

resignation when her child died, says, " I could 
not give up my child in that way : I have not 
grace enough to do it." But why should she 
have such grace now ? It will be time enough 
when she needs it. That supply can be gotten 
at only when she is in the midst of the experi- 
ence. While the child lives, the mother's duty 
is not sorrow, not submission, but rather, with 
loving fidelity, to train her child for this life, 
and for the life beyond ; and for this duty, the 
mother will receive all needful grace, if she 
seeks it in faith. Then, if death comes to her 
child, grace will be given, enabling her to meet 
the bereavement, and sweetly to submit to 
God's disclosed will. 

Many people dread death, and fear that they 
can never meet it with triumph ; but God does 
not give grace for victorious dying when one's 
duty is to live. He gives then grace for liv- 
ing, grace for honesty, grace for fidelity, grace 
for heroism in life's battle : then, when death 
comes, when life's work is finished, and the 
hour comes for the departure, he will give dy- 
ing grace. The storehouse in which that sup- 



GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 7 1 

ply is laid up, is found only in the valley of 
shadows ; and we cannot get the prepared and 
reserved goodness until we come to the experi- 
ence to which it is pre-eminently suited. 

The best of God's goodness is laid up in 
heaven : hence, to a Christian, death is always 
a glorious gain. A poet represents our first 
parent as trembling when he thought of the 
sun setting the first day of his life, and of 
night's coming. It seemed to him, that only 
calamity could result to this fair world. But, 
to his amazement, when the sun went down 
softly and silently, thousands of brilliant stars 
flashed out, and lo ! creation infinitely widened 
in his view. The night revealed far more than 
it hid. Instead of fly, flower, and leaf, which 
the sun's beams showed, the darkness unveiled 
all the glorious orbs of the sky. So, similarly, 
we shun and dread death. It seems to be only 
darkness, and seems to hide the lovely things 
on which our eyes have looked ; but, in reality, 
it will reveal far more than it hides. If it 
shuts our eyes to the little, perishing things of 
earth, it will unveil to us the splendors of eter- 



72 GOD'S RESERVE OF GOODNESS. 

nity. The best things are laid up in heaven, 
and can only be gotten when we pass through 
death's gate into the Father's house. 

Thus, this principle of reserved goodness 
runs through all God's economy. Blessings 
are laid up, and are given to us as we need 
them. Every experience brings to us its own 
store. Sorrow comes ; but, veiled in the sor- 
row, the angel of comfort comes too. It grows 
dark, but then the lamps of promise shine out. 
Losses are met, but there is a divine secret 
that changes loss into gain. A bitter cup is 
given, but it proves to be medicine for our 
soul. Death comes, and seems the end of all : 
but, lo ! it is only the beginning of life ; for it 
leads us away from empty shadows to eternal 
realities. 



CHAPTER VII. 

THE BLESSING OP NOT GETTING. 

" The good we hoped to gain has failed us. Well, 
We do not see the ending ; and the boon 
May wait us down the ages, — who can tell ? — 
And bless us amply soon. 

In God's eternal plan, a month, a year, 
Is but an hour of some slow April day, 

Holding the germs of what we hope and fear 
To blossom far away." 

There is one class of mercies and blessings 
of which we are not sufficiently ready to take 
note. These are the things that God keeps 
from us. We recount, with more or less grati- 
tude, the good gifts that we receive from him ; 
but there are many blessings that consist in 
our not receiving. In one of Miss Havergal's 
bright flashes of spiritual truth, she quotes these 
words of Moses to the Israelites : " As for thee, 
the Lord thy God hath not suffered thee so to 

n 



74 THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 

do." Then she adds, "What a stepping-stone! 
We give thanks, often with a tearful, doubtful 
voice, for our spiritual mercies positive ; but 
what an almost infinite field there is for mercies 
negative ! We cannot even imagine all that 
God has suffered us not to do, not to be." 
There is no doubt that very many of the Lord's 
greatest kindnesses are shown in saving us from 
unseen and unsuspected perils, and in keeping 
from us things that we desire, but which would 
surely work us harm instead of blessing, were 
we to receive them. 

There was a trifling accident to a railway- 
train one day, which caused an hour r s delay. 
One lady on the train was greatly excited. The 
detention would cause her to miss the steamer, 
and her friends would be disappointed in the 
morning when she should fail to arrive. That 
night the steamer on which she so eagerly 
wished to embark was burned to the water's 
edge, and nearly all on board perished. Her 
feeling of grieved disappointment was changed 
to one of grateful praise to God for the strange 
deliverance he had wrought. A carriage drove 



THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 75 

rapidly to a station one afternoon, just as the 
train rolled away : it contained a gentleman and 
his family. They manifested much annoyance 
and impatience at the failure to be in time. 
Important engagements for to-morrow could 
not now be met. Sharp words were spoken to 
the coachman ; for the fault was his, as he had 
been ten minutes late in appearing. An angry 
scowl was on the gentleman's face, as he drove 
homeward again. All the evening he was sullen 
and unhappy. In the next morning's papers 
he read an account of a terrible bridge accident 
on the railway. The train he had been so anx- 
ious to take, and so annoyed at missing, had 
carried many of its sleeping passengers to a 
horrible death. The feeling of bitter vexation 
and sullen anger was instantly changed to one 
of thanksgiving. In both these cases the good- 
ness of God was shown in not suffering his 
children to do what they considered essential 
to their happiness or success. 

These are typical illustrations. In almost 
every life there are similar deliverances at some 
time or other, though not always so remarkable 



?6 THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 

or so apparent. There is no one who has care- 
fully and thoughtfully observed the course of 
his own life, who cannot recall many instances 
in which providential interferences and disap- 
pointments have proved blessings in the end, 
saving him from calamity or loss, or bringing 
to him better things than those which they 
took out of his grasp. We make our plans 
with eager hope and expectation, setting our 
hearts on things which seem to us most radiant 
and worthy : then God steps in, and sets these 
plans of ours aside, substituting others of his 
own, which seem destructive. We submit, per- 
haps sullenly, with rebellious heart : it seems 
to us a sore adversity ; but in a little while we 
learn that the strange interference, over which 
we struggled so painfully, and were so sorely 
perplexed, was one of God's loving thoughts, — 
his way of saving us from peril or loss. If he 
had let us have our own way, pain or sorrow 
would have been the inevitable result. He 
blessed us by not permitting us to do as we 
wished. 

Who can tell from how many unseen and 



THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 77 

unsuspected dangers he is every day delivered ? 
When a passenger arrives at the end of a stormy 
voyage, he is thankful for rescue from peril ; 
but when the voyage is quiet, without tempest 
or angry billow, he does not feel the same grati- 
tude. Yet, why is not his preservation even 
more remarkable in this case than in that ? He 
has been kept not only from danger imminent 
and apparent, but also from terror or anxiety. 
In an old-time gathering of clergymen, one of 
them asked the others to unite with him in 
thanksgiving to God for a signal deliverance on 
his way to the meeting. On the edge of a peril- 
ous precipice his horse had stumbled, and only 
the good hand of God had saved him from be- 
ing hurled to death. Another clergyman asked 
that thanks might be given also for his still 
greater deliverance : he had come over the same 
dangerous road, and his horse had not even 
stumbled. Surely, he was right : he had still 
greater cause for thankfulness than the other. 
Each of our lives is one unbroken succession 
of such deliverances. There is not a moment 
when possible danger is not imminent. Yet 



78 THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 

we too often forget God's mercy in saving us 
from exposure to perils. We thank him for 
sparing us in the midst of life's accidents, but 
do not thank him for keeping us even from the 
alarm and shock of accident. 

Passing into the realm of spiritual experi- 
ences, the field is equally large. God is con- 
tinually blessing us by suffering us not to do 
certain things which we greatly desire to do. 
He thwarts our worldly ambitions, because to 
permit us to achieve them would be to suffer 
our souls to be lost or seriously harmed. One 
man desires worldly prosperity, but in his every 
effort in that direction he is defeated. He 
speaks of his failures as misfortunes, and won- 
ders why it is that other men, less industrious 
and less conscientious, succeed so much better 
than he. He even intimates that God's ways 
are not equal. But, no doubt, the very disap- 
pointments over which he grieves are in reality 
the richest of blessings. God knows that the 
success of his plans would be fatal to the higher 
interests of his spiritual life. The best bless- 
ing God can bestow upon him is to suffer him 



THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 79 

not to prosper in his plan to gather riches, and 
to attain ease. The same- is true of all other 
human ambitions. To let men have what they 
want, would be to open the gates of ruin and 
death for them. What they hunger for, think- 
ing it bread, is but a cold stone. The path 
that to their eyes seems to be strewn with 
flowers, and to lead to a paradise, is full of 
thorns, and leads to darkness and death. The 
things they crave and cry for, thinking to find 
sweet satisfaction in them, when gotten at last 
prove to be but bitter ashes. 

" I think God sometimes sends what we have cried for, 

Year after year in vain, 
To prove to us how poor the things we've sighed for, 

And how beset with pain. 
The human heart can know no greater trial 

Than comes with this confession, 
That the continued sorrow of denial 

Was better than possession." 

Sometimes the ways of God do seem hard. 
Our fondest hopes are crushed : our fairest joys 
fade like summer flowers. The desires of our 



80 THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 

hearts are withheld from us ; yet, if we are 
God's children, we cannot doubt that in every- 
one of these losses or denials a blessing is 
hidden. Right here we get a glimpse into the 
mystery of many unanswered prayers. The 
things we seek woulcl not work us good in 
the end, but evil. The things we plead to have 
removed, are essential to our highest interests. 
Health is supposed to be better than sickness, 
but there comes a time when God's kindness 
will be most wisely shown by denying us 
health. He never takes pleasure in causing us 
to suffer ; he is touched by our sorrows ; every 
grief and pain of ours he feels. Yet he loves 
us too well to give us things that would harm 
us, or to spare us the trial that is needful for 
our spiritual good. It will be seen in the end, 
that many of the very richest blessings of all 
our lives have come to us through God's de- 
nials, his withholdings, or his shattering of our 
hopes and joys. When we are called to be 
Christians, we are not promised earthly ease 
and possession. True, we are told that we 
shall be heirs to a great legacy, — " heirs of 



THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 8 1 

God, and joint heirs with Christ," — but our 
legacy is not such as men in this world be- 
queath in their wills to their children. To be 
"joint heirs with Christ" implies that we must 
first share with him his life of self-denial and 
sacrifice before we can become partakers with 
him in the joys and glories of his exaltation. 

" My share ! To-day men call it grief and death ; 

I see the joy and life to-morrow; 
I thank our Father with my every breath 

For this sweet legacy of sorrow ; 
And through my tears I call to each, ' Joint heir 
With Christ, make haste to ask him for thy share ! ' " 

We should never forget that the object of 
all divine culture is to sanctify us, and make 
us vessels meet for the Master's use. To this 
high and glorious end, present pleasure and 
gratification must ofttimes be sacrificed. This 
is the true key to all the mysteries of Provi- 
dence. Any thins: that hinders entire conse- 
cration to Christ is working us harm ; and 
though it be our tenderest joy, it had better be 
taken away. In one of Miss Havergal's poems 



82 THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 

she tells of one who had chosen the Master's 
service, but who could not yield the full meas- 
ure that other lives could bring, because the 
Master had given her a charge to keep, — 

" A tiny hand, a darling hand, that traced 
On her heart's tablet words of golden love ; 
And there was not much room for other lines." 

Jesus wished her to do larger, wider work for 

him, to gather not one new gem, but many, 

for his crown. 

" And so He came : 
The Master came himself, and gently took 
The little hand in his, and gave it room 
Among the angel harpers. Jesus came, 
And laid his own hand on the quivering heart, 
And made it very still, that he might write 
Invisible words of power, — free to serve ! 
Then through the darkness and the chill he sent 
A heat-ray of his love, developing 
The mystic writing, till it glowed and shone, 
And lit up all her life with radiance new, — 
The happy service of a yielded heart." 

This is but one illustration of a discipline 
that is going on all the while in the lives 



THE BLESSING OF NOT GETTING. 83 

of Christ's disciples. Prayer is not always 
granted, even when the heart clings with holi- 
est affection to its most precious joy. Noth- 
ing must hinder our consecration. We should 
never think first of what will give us joy or 
comfort, but of what will work out God's holy 
will in us, and fit us for doing the service for 
him which he wants us to render. Pain is oft- 
times better for us than pleasure, loss than 
gain, sorrow than joy, disaster than deliver- 
ance. Faith should know that God's withhold- 
ings from us when he does not give what we 
ask, are richer blessings than were he to open 
to us all the treasure-houses at whose doors 
we stand and knock with so great vehemence. 
Our unanswered prayers have just as real and 
as blessed answer as those which bring what 
we seek. 



CHAPTER VIII. 

"AFTERWARD." 

" Let us leave God alone ! 
Why should I doubt he will explain in time 
What I feel now, but fail to find the words ? " 

Robert Browning. 

There is a wondrous power of explanation 
in "afterward." Things do not seem to us to- 
day as they will seem to-morrow. This is the 
key which the Scriptures give us for the solu- 
tion of the strange mystery of affliction. " No 
chastening for the present seemeth to be joy- 
ous, but grievous ; nevertheless, afterward it 
yieldeth the peaceable fruit of righteousness." 
There are many things in God's way with his 
people which, at the time, are dark and obscure, 
but which the future makes clear and plain. 
To-day's heavy clouds to-morrow are gone ; 
and under the bright shining of the sun, and 
the deep blue of the sky, the flowers are 
8 4 



"AFTERWARD." 85 

sweeter, the grass is greener, and all life is 
more beautiful. To-day's tears to-morrow are 
turned to lenses through which eyes, dim no 
longer, see far into the clear heavens, and 
behold the kindliness and radiance of God's 
face. 

One reason for the present obscurity of life 
is our ignorance, our limited knowledge. We 
know now only in part : we see only in a 
mirror darkly. We have learned merely the 
rudiments, and cannot understand the more 
advanced and abstruse things. A boy enters 
a school, and the teacher puts into his hand a 
Greek book, — a New Testament, we will say, 
— and asks him to read from the page before 
him ; but he cannot make out a word of it ; he 
does not know even the alphabet ; it is a page 
of hieroglyphics to him. But the years roll 
on : he applies himself with diligence to the 
study of the language, and by patient degrees 
masters it. The day of his graduation comes, 
and the teacher again places in his hand the 
same page that puzzled and perplexed him on 
the day of his entrance. It is all plain to him 



86 "AFTERWARD." 

now ; he reads it with ease, and readily under- 
stands every word ; he sees beauty in every 
line. Every sentence contains some golden 
truth. It is a page of St. John's Gospel : the 
words are those that fell from the lips of 
Christ himself, and are full of love, of wisdom, 
of heavenly instruction. As he reads them, 
they thrill his soul, and fill his heart with 
warmth and joy. Every line is bright now 
with the hidden fires of God's love. Riper 
knowledge has cleared away all the mystery, 
and unlocked the precious treasures. 

We are all scholars in God's school. The 
book of providence is written in a language we 
do not yet understand ; but the passing years, 
with their experiences, bring riper knowledge, 
and, as we learn more and more, the painful 
mysteries vanish. When we stand, at length, 
at the end of our school-days, the old, confus- 
ing pages will be plain and clear to us, as child- 
hood's earliest lessons, though hard at the time, 
are afterward to ripe, manly wisdom. Then 
we shall see that every perplexed line held a 
golden lesson of wisdom for our hearts, and 



"AFTERWARD." 87 

that the book of providence is but another of 
God's many testaments of love. 

In one of George Macdonald's poems, a little 
child runs to her father, as he sits absorbed in 
his mental conflicts, and asks, " Father, what 
is poetry ? " — " One of the most beautiful 
things that God has ever made," he replies. 
He opens a book, and shows her some poetry. 
She looks at it eagerly ; but a shadow comes 
over her face, and she says, " I do not think 
that is so pretty." He then reads aloud some 
verses, and the reading pleases her ; but still 
she cannot understand how poetry is beautiful. 
Her mother is beautiful, the flowers and the 
stars are beautiful ; but poetry is not like any 
of these, and she cannot see the beauty in it. 
Then her father tells her she cannot under- 
stand until she is older, but that she will then 
find out for herself, and will love poetry well. 

But the father's lesson was more for his own 
puzzled heart than for his child's. He, too, 
must wait until he had grown older and wiser, 
and then he would see the beauty he could not 
now see in God's strange providence. 



88 "AFTERWARD? 

We are all like little children. God writes 
in poetry which, no doubt, is very beautiful, as 
his eyes look upon it, and read its sentences ; 
but we must wait to learn more before we can 
read the precious truths and golden thoughts 
which lie in the lines. In our sorrows and dis- 
appointments, good men come to us, and tell us 
that the Lord doeth all things well ; that there 
is some blessing for us in every bitter cup ; 
that the strange answers we get to our prayers 
are the very best things of God's love, though 
so disguised. We open the Bible, and we find 
there the same assurances ; but we cannot see 
the blessing, the good, the love, in the painful 
and perplexing experiences of our lives. To 
our dim eyes, all is darkness, and our faith is 
well-nigh staggered. Then our Lord's word 
comes to us, " What I do, thou knowest not 
now; but thou shalt know hereafter. " After- 
ward " is the key. Possibly in this world, cer- 
tainly in the great " hereafter" of heaven, we 
shall see that every providence of God, even 
the providences that were painful, and that 
seemed adverse, meant blessing and good. No 



"AFTERWARD." 89 

doubt, we shall see, too, that many of the rich- 
est blessings of our lives, as they stand in radi- 
ant brightness before Christ's face, have come 
from the experiences that were most painful 
and most unwelcome. 

" This life is one ; and in its warp and woof 
There runs a thread of gold that glitters fair, 
And sometimes in the pattern shows most sweet 
Where there are sombre colors." 

Another reason why many of God's ways 
seem so strange to us, is because we see them 
only in their incompleteness. We must wait 
until they are finished before we can fully un- 
derstand God's intention in them, or see the 
beauty that is in his thought. We stand by 
the sculptor's block when he is busy upon it 
with mallet and chisel, and to our eye it appears 
rough, with no lines of beauty ; but we see it 
afterward, when it is unveiled to the world, and 
it seems almost to breathe, so perfect is the 
finished statue. A building is going up. There 
is now but an unsightly excavation, with piles 
of stones, timbers, and iron columns lying all 



90 "AFTERWARD." 

about in confusion : afterward, however, we re- 
turn, and a fine structure stands before our 
eyes, noble and majestic. Neither the statue 
nor the building was beautiful in its incomplete- 
ness. At present we see God's work in us and 
for us only in the process, not in its finished 
state : when it is complete, we shall understand 
why it was done in this way or in that. 

" As when some workers, toiling at a loom, 
Having but little portions of the roll 
Of some huge fabric, cannot see the whole, 
And note but atoms, wherein they entomb — 
As objects fade in evening's first gray gloom — 
The large design, from which each trifling dole 
But goes to make the long much-wished-for goal, 
So do we seek to penetrate the doom 
That lies so heavily upon our life, 
And strive to learn the whole that there must be; 
For each day has its own completed piece. 
The whole awaits us, where no anxious strife 
Can mar completeness : here but God's eyes see 
What death shall show us when our life shall cease." 

The marble might complain of the strokes, 
which seem only to cut it away, wasting its 
substance ; but when the statue stands forth, 



"AFTERWARD? 9 1 

the marvel and admiration of all eyes, it would 
complain no longer. The vine might cry out 
under the sharpness of the pruning-knife, as 
many of its finest branches are removed ; but 
when it hangs laden with purple clusters, its 
cry of pain would become a song of joy. 

" Now, the pruning, sharp, unsparing, 
Scattered blossom, bleeding shoot; 
Afterward, the plenteous bearing 
Of the Master's pleasant fruit." 

Most things look different when viewed from 
different points and in different lights. Events 
and experiences do not appear the same when 
we are in the midst of them, and after we have 
passed through and beyond them. The after- 
view, however, is the truest. This is especially 
so of life's sorrows : as we endure them, they 
are grievous ; but afterward the fruits of peace 
appear. In the Canton of Bern, in the Swiss 
Oberland, a mountain stream rushes in a torrent 
toward the valley, as if it would carry destruc- 
tion to the villages below ; but, leaping from 
the sheer precipice of nearly nine hundred feet, 
it is caught in the clutch of the winds, and 



92 "AFTERWARD? 

sifted down in fine, soft spray, whose benignant 
showering covers the fields with perpetual green. 
So sorrow comes, a dashing torrent, threatening 
to destroy us ; but by the breath of God's Spirit 
it is changed as it falls, and pours its soft, 
gentle showers upon our hearts, bedewing our 
withering graces, and leaving rich blessings 
upon our whole life. 

We should learn to trust God, even when the 
hour is darkest. The morning will surely come, 
and in its light the things that alarm us now 
will appear in friendly aspect ; and in the forms 
we have dreaded so much, we shall see the be- 
nign face of Jesus as he comes to us in love. 
The ploughings of our hearts are but the prep- 
aration for fruitfulness. The black clouds that 
appear so portentous of evil pass by, leaving 
only gentle rain, which renews all the life, and 
changes desert to garden. 

"What shall thine ' afterward ' be, O Lord ? 

I wonder, and wait to see 
(While to thy chastening hand I bow) 
What peaceable fruit may be ripening now, — 

Ripening fast for me." 



CHAPTER IX. 

THE BLESSEDNESS OP LONGING. 

" God loves to be longed for, he loves to be sought ; 

For he sought us himself with such longing and love, 

He died for desire of us, marvellous thought ! 

And he yearns for us now to be with him above." 

Faber. 

At first thought, a condition of longing 
would seem to be undesirable, and far from 
blessedness. Longing suggests unhappiness, 
discontent, the absence of that peace which 
seems to us to represent the loftiest state of 
blessedness, and the highest ideal of the life 
of faith. To have all our longings satisfied, 
we are apt to regard as the most desirable 
human condition. Yet, when we think more 
deeply of it, we know that there is a blessed- 
ness in longing. Our poet's words are true : — 

" Of all the myriad moods of mind 

That through the soul come thronging, 
Which one was e'er so dear, so kind, 
So beautiful as longing? " 93 



94 THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 

If this appear too strong, we have to remem- 
ber that one of our Lord's beatitudes was for 
those who long. "Blessed are they which do 
hunger and thirst after righteousness : for they 
shall be filled." Longing is, then, a healthful 
state ; one that has an upward look, and has 
the promise of spiritual enriching. Satisfac- 
tion with one's attainments or achievements in 
any line, but especially in spiritual life and in 
personal holiness, is not an encouraging condi- 
tion and may be unhealthful, even a mark of 
incipient decay. 

Probably the most perfect piece of marble 
ever wrought by human hands is the statue of 
the Christ by Thorwaldsen. Those who have 
seen it in the Metropolitan Church at Copen- 
hagen say that the whole light of the story of 
the gospel seems to stream down upon them 
from the stone as they look at it. The artist 
wrought a long while upon it, and with in- 
tense joy and enthusiasm ; but when at last 
the statue was completed, a deep melancholy 
settled over him. When asked the reason for 
this, he said that his genius was decaying. 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 95 

" Here is my statue of Christ : it is the first of 
my works with which I have ever felt satisfied. 
Till now my ideal has always been far beyond 
what I could execute, but it is no longer so : I 
shall never have a great idea again." To Thor- 
waldsen, satisfaction with his work was the sure 
indication of the limit of achievement. He felt 
that he would grow no more, because there was 
now no longing in his soul for any thing better. 
In all life this law applies. In the physical 
realm, hunger is a mark of health, and the 
want of appetite proclaims disease. So the 
mind grows through longing. The doors of 
knowledge are opened to the student's eye, 
giving a glimpse of the boundless fields that 
stretch in all directions, and producing a crav- 
ing, a hunger to know, which leads him to seek 
with eagerness for the rich treasures of wis- 
dom. So long as this mind-hunger continues, 
the quest for knowledge will continue, and ever 
new stores will be discovered ; but, whenever 
the hunger ceases, mental growth is at an end, 
and the mind has gained and passed its best 
achievements. 



96 THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 

In spiritual life the same is true. There is 
no mood so hopeful as longing. The highest 
state is one of hunger and thirst, intense desire 
for more life, more holiness, more power, closer 
communion with God, more of the divine like- 
ness in the soul. The gospel promises rest to 
those who come to Christ. Peace was one of 
the benedictions the Saviour left for his people. 
Contentment is one of the graces and duties 
enjoined upon the Christian, but spiritual hun- 
ger is not incompatible with either peace or 
contentment. It is not unrest ; it is not anx- 
iety or worry ; it is not murmuring discontent : 
it is deep longing for more and ever more of all 
blessings, — calmer rest, sweeter peace, more 
perfect contentment, with richer heart-fulness 
of Christ, and more and more of all the gifts 
of the Spirit. It is depicted in the Psalms as 
an intense thirst for God, not the bitter cry of 
an unforgiven soul for mercy, but the deep, 
passionate yearning of a loving spirit for closer, 
fuller, richer, more satisfying communion with 
God himself. We find it in the life of the 
greatest of the apostles, who, wherever we see 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 97 

him, on whatever radiant height, is still press- 
ing on, with unsatisfied longing and quenchless 
ardor, toward loftier summits and more radiant 
peaks, crying ever for more intimate knowledge 
of Christ, and more and more of the fulness of 
God. The ideal Christian life is one of in- 
satiable thirst, never pausing in any arbor of 
spiritual content, but ever wooed on by visions 
of new joys and attainments. 

The absence of this longing tells of the 
cessation of spiritual growth. Longing is the 
very soul of all true prayer. If we desire noth- 
ing more, we will ask nothing more. Longing 
is the empty hand reached out to receive new 
gifts from heaven ; it is the heart's cry which 
God hears with acceptance, and answers with 
more and more ; it is the ascending angel that 
climbs the starry ladder to return on the same 
radiant stairway with blessings from God's very 
throne ; it is the key that unlocks new store- 
houses of divine goodness and enrichment ; it 
is the bold navigator that ventures out on un- 
known seas, and discovers new continents ; it 
is, indeed, nothing less than the very life of 



98 THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 

God in the human soul, struggling to grow up 
in us into the fulness of the stature of Christ. 
Longing is the transfiguring spirit which puri- 
nes these dull, earthly lives of ours, and changes 
them little by little into the divine image. 

" The thing we long for, that we are 
For one transcendent moment ; " 

and continued longing after the good lifts us up 
into the good. The heavenly ideal ever kept 
before the mind, and longed after with intensity 
of desire, carves itself in the soul. As Lowell 
says again, — 

"Longing is God's fresh, heavenward will 

With our poor earthward striving : 
We quench it that we may be still 

Content with merely living. 
But, would we learn that heart's full scope 

Which we are hourly wronging, 
Our lives must climb from hope to hope, 

And realize our longing." 

The latter half of this stanza must not be 
overlooked. If longing is God's angel to lead 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 99 

us heavenward, we must follow where the angel 
leads. Mere longing opens no gates, takes us 
to no heights, finds no rich treasures, discovers 
no new worlds. Longing without action is a 
most unhealthy state : it is but a poor senti- 
mental day-dreaming, which leaves the soul 
more empty than ever when the dreams have 
vanished. Longing, to be blessed, must be- 
come an inspiration. When Raphael was asked 
how he painted such wonderful pictures, he 
said, " I dream dreams, and see visions ; and 
then I paint my dreams and my visions" With 
marvellous skill his hand wrought into forms 
of radiant beauty the lovely creations of his 
mind: otherwise they would never have bright- 
ened the world with their wondrous splendors. 
Longing not only sees the heavenly visions, 
but is obedient to them, and strives to realize 
them. It struggles up toward the excellence 
that shines before it : it seeks to attain the 
fine qualities which it admires. It is not sat- 
isfied with good resolves, but sets forward to 
make them come true. When Joan of Arc 
was asked what virtue she supposed dwelt in 



100 THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. 

her white standard that made it so victorious, 
she replied, " I said to it, ' Go boldly among 
the English,' and then I followed it myself!' 
The white banner without "the lily-white 
maid " herself would have won no victories. 
So, when we send out the white banners of pure 
and noble longings, we must be sure to follow 
them ourselves, if we would win the blessings 
which our hearts crave. 

" I will not waste one breath of life in sighing ; 
For other ends has life been given to me, — 
Duties and self-devotion, daily dying 
Into a higher, better life with Thee, 
My God, with Thee." 

Every longing should at once become an 
active impulse in the soul. The hand should 
instantly be reached out to paint or carve the 
beauty of which the heart dreams, and for 
which it longs. Our longings should lead us 
into all paths of Christly service and all heroic 
duty. Mere gazing heavenward after the as- 
cended Christ, and waiting and watching for 
his return, is not the way to realize the blessed 



THE BLESSEDNESS OF LONGING. IOI 

glory. There is work to do to prepare for his 
coming, and he will come soonest and with 
greatest joy to those who do most to advance 
his kingdom. 



CHAPTER X. 

THE COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 

" If thou art blest, 
Then let the sunshine of thy gladness rest 
On the dark edge of each cloud that lies 

Black in thy brother's skies. 

If thou art sad, 

Still be thou in thy brother's gladness glad." 

Hamilton. 

The true nature of sympathy is not always 
understood : it is more than tears, which often 
lie near the surface, and flow easily at the touch 
of any external experience. Some natures are 
wonderfully sensitive to the expressions of joy 
or sorrow in other lives. You stand before a 
cliff, and in responsive echo every sound that 
is made beside you comes back to your ear. If 
a child cries, the cliff sobs back. The murmur 
of a soft song returns again, like a melody sung 
by some far-away singer. The notes of speech 
come back echoing through the air. The cliff is 



COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 103 

sensitive to every wave of sound, and responds 
to it. There are human hearts that are simi- 
larly sensitive to every touch of human expe- 
rience that plays upon them : they are so full 
of emotion, that they respond to every note of 
joy or sorrow that strikes their chords. They 
echo back the merry laughter, the voice of 
tenderness, the wail of sorrow, but they are 
nothing more than echoes : only from their sur- 
face do they reflects the tones of other lives. 
No depths are stirred. They know nothing 
of sympathy. Sympathy is more than an 
echo : its background is individual experience. 
Strength is not enough for this ministry of 
sympathy, even the purest, noblest, most ma- 
jestic strength : it must have passed through 
the fires of suffering, or of struggle, to get the 
fineness and delicacy required for this sacred 
work. Moral uprightness and purity are not 
enough : unchastened, even these divine quali- 
ties are too cold to render the service that sad 
and weary hearts need in their loneliness and 
weakness. Even the purest holiness must be 
swept through by the thrills of pain before it 



104 COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 

can understand the experience of pain in 
others, and be made capable of feeling with 
them in their weakness and suffering. One 
may have pity without knowing any thing of 
the experience of the condition which appeals 
to him; but pity is not sympathy. Holy angels 
can pity the sons of men in their sore need, 
but in their lofty heights of unfallen purity 
they cannot sympathize with us mortals. 

" Not pity gazing from a height 
In shining and immaculate light, 

Can touch the sorrow-stricken soul, 
And make it glow with warmth again ; 
But love — 'tis love. can ease the pain, 

'Tis love can make the heart feel whole." 

Even Christ was not fitted to sympathize 
with men until he had entered into human flesh, 
and lived an actual human life. One would say 
that his divine omniscience certainly qualified 
him for sympathy. He knew already every 
phase of experience, — in the sense that his eye 
saw into every nook and cranny of every hu- 
man heart, — and discerned and understood 



COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 105 

every play of emotion, every struggle, every 
pain ; yet his omniscience did not prepare him 
for true sympathy : he must become a man. 
Nor was that enough : he might have taken hu- 
manity upon him, and then have passed at once 
with it into the glory of heaven. But he must 
live an actual human life ; his nature must be 
enriched by experience ; he must know life, not 
merely by his omniscience, but by having passed 
through it himself. This is the background of 
the precious doctrine of Christly sympathy. 
Christ was tempted in all points, and therefore 
he can be touched by the feeling of our infirmi- 
ties. No matter what the phase of trial or 
struggle on which he looks down upon the 
earth, he can say, " I understand that. At 
Galilee, or at Bethany, or in the wilderness, or 
in Gethsemane, or on Calvary, I passed through 
that same phase of experience." 

So even the tenderest human life — the one 
most responsive to external emotional influences 
— cannot truly sympathize with our lives until 
it has been enriched by experiences of its own. 
The young man brought up in a sequestered 



106 COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 

home, away from the mad excitements of the 
world, cannot understand, nor sympathize with, 
the struggles of the man who is wrestling with 
the sore temptations of a great city. The 
young woman who has never herself suffered, 
who has never had a wish ungratified nor a 
hope thwarted, nor has ever endured a pang or 
a grief, is not fitted to sit down beside a sister 
woman in sore agony over a shattered joy or a 
crushed hope, and really understand her feel- 
ings, or enter into actual sympathy with her. 

Every one knows how fruit ripens. There 
are a thousand influences that play upon it all 
the summer through, — influences of climate, of 
sun and rain, of cold and heat, of darkness and 
light. Some fruits wait, too, for the frosts of 
autumn to come to complete the process of 
ripening. In some such way human life ripens. 
There are countless influences, — trial, joy, 
struggle, hardship, toil, ease, prosperity, adver- 
sity, success, failure, — and at last the character 
is mellow and gentle. 

The old people understand this. Disappoint- 
ments, bereavements, anxieties, tender joys, the 



COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 107 

deep ploughing of the heart by afflictions, and 
all the diversified experiences of threescore or 
fourscore years, — how they enrich the heart 
that is held all the while close to Christ under 
the warmth of his love ! This is one of the 
blessed qualities of a ripe and beautiful Chris- 
tian old age, that we sometimes overlook or 
underestimate. How much the aged know 
about life, if they have lived it well ! What 
a power of helpfulness such an enriching puts 
into their hearts ! No ministry in this world is 
finer than that of those who have learned life's 
secrets in the school of experience, and then 
go about, inspiring, strengthening, and guiding 
younger souls who come after them. 

A heart thus disciplined is prepared for sym- 
pathy, in the deepest, truest sense. It needs 
no labored words of explanation to enable it to 
understand the stress and strain of trial, the 
bitterness of sorrow, or the burden of infirmity. 
It has felt the same, and now is thrilled by the 
experience on which it looks. Sympathy is a 
wonderful thing : it has a strange and mighty 
power of inspiration in it. How strong it makes 



108 COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 

us to go on with our work, to know that others 
care for us, and are interested in us ! There 
is something in the simple touch of a friendly 
hand, or the look of a kindly eye, or the emo- 
tion that plays on an earnest face, that sends a 
quickening thrill through our souls. When one 
is in deep sorrow, how is he strengthened to 
bear it by feeling the pressure of a warm clasp, 
which tells him, better than any words could 
do, of sincere sympathy ! It cannot bring back 
his dead; it cannot restore the shattered idol ; 
it cannot calm the storm that is raging about 
him ; it cannot remove a straw of the burden, 
nor eliminate one line of the chapter of grief : 
but there is another human heart close by that 
feels for him ; there is a loving presence creep- 
ing up in the darkness close beside him ; there 
is companionship ; he is not alone, and this 
blessed consciousness makes him strong. 

A little token of love sent into your sick- 
room from some gentle hand, when human 
presences are shut out, telling of a heart out- 
side that thinks about you, what a messenger 
of gladness it is ! No angel's visit could be 



COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 109 

more welcome or more comforting. There is a 
story of a prisoner who had received nothing 
but severity in his prison-life, and knew noth- 
ing of human tenderness. One day a kindly 
man visited him, and spoke brotherly words, 
manifesting a sincere and hearty interest in 
him. It was a new and strange experience ; 
and, after the man had gone away, he said, " I 
can stay here now, for I know there is one man, 
at least, in the great world outside, who cares 
for me, and has an interest in me." And that 
consciousness cheered and brightened for many 
days the gloom of his lonely incarceration. 
Life is full of similar illustrations. 

" A clasp of hands will oft reveal 
A sympathy that makes us feel 

Ourselves again ; we lose our care : 
And in our heart's first glad rebound 
At tender sympathy new found, 

The world once more seems bright and fair." 

If we would, then, be fitted for this blessed 
ministry, we must be content to learn in the 
school of experience. Even Christ learned by 



IIO COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. 

the things he suffered. Angels are not fitted 
for sympathy, for they know nothing about 
human life. In a picture by Domenichino, 
there is an angel standing by the empty cross, 
touching with his finger one of the sharp 
points in the thorn-crown which the Saviour 
had worn. On his face there is the strangest 
bewilderment. He is trying to make out the 
mystery of sorrow. He knows nothing of suf- 
fering, for he has never suffered. There is 
nothing in the angel nature or in the angel life 
to interpret struggle or pain. The same is 
measurably true of untried human life. If we 
would be sons of consolation, our natures must 
be enriched by experience. We are not natu- 
rally gentle to all men. There is a harshness 
in us that needs to be mellowed. Human up- 
rightness undisciplined, is apt to be stern and 
severe, even uncharitable, toward weakness. 
We are apt to be heedless of the feelings of 
others, to forget how many hearts are sore, and 
carry heavy burdens. We have no sympathy 
with infirmity, because we do not know from 
experience what it means. We are not gentle 



COST AND WORTH OF SYMPATHY. Ill 

toward sorrow, because our own hearts never 
have been ploughed. We give constant pain 
to sensitive spirits by w r ord and act, because 
we have not learned that gentle delicacy and 
thoughtful tenderness which can be learned 
only through the careless wounding of our own 
feelings by others. These are lessons we can 
learn in no school but that of personal experi- 
ence. The best universities cannot teach us 
the divine art of sympathy. We must walk in 
the deep valleys ourselves, and then we can be 
guides to other souls. We must feel the strain, 
and carry the burden, and endure the struggle, 
ourselves, and then we can be touched, and can 
give help to others in life's sore stress and 
poignant need. 

" May I reach 
That purest heaven, — be to other souls 
The cup of strength in some great agony, 
Enkindle generous ardor, feed pure love, 
Beget the smiles that have no cruelty, 
Be the sweet presence of a good diffused, 
And in diffusion ever more intense ! " 



CHAPTER XL 

FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 

" To do God's will, that's all 
That need concern us ; not to carp or ask 
The meaning of it, but to ply our task, 

Whatever may befall ; 
Accepting good or ill as he may send, 
And wait until the end." 

One of the most inspiring of truths is, that 
God has a distinct plan for each one of us in 
sending us into this world. Not only does he 
create us all to be useful, to take some part in 
the world's affairs, to honor and glorify him in 
some way, but he designs each person for some 
definite place and some specific work. He does 
not send us into life merely to fill any niche 
into which we may chance to be lifted by the 
vicissitudes of life, or to do whatever bits of 
work may drift to our hands in the vast and 
complicated mesh of human affairs. God has 
a great plan, embracing "all his creatures and 

112 



FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 113 

all their actions ; " and in this plan every in- 
telligent being has an allotted place and an 
assigned part. God has, therefore, a distinct 
thought and purpose for each one of us ; and 
a true life is one in which we simply fulfil 
the divine intention concerning us, occupy the 
place for which we were made, and do the par- 
ticular work set down for us in God's plan. 

A distinguished preacher has said, " There 
is a definite and proper end and issue for every 
man's existence, an end which to the heart of 
God is the good intended for him, or for which 
he was intended ; that which he is privileged to 
become, called to become, ought to become ; 
that which God will assist him to become, and 
which he cannot miss save by his own fault. 
Every human soul has a complete and perfect 
plan cherished for it in the heart of God, — 
a divine biography marked out, which it enters 
into life to live." Surely this is a great 
thought, and one that gives to life — to each 
and every life, the smallest, the obscurest — a 
sacred dignity and importance. Nothing can 
be trivial or common which the great God 



114 FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 

thinks about, plans, and creates. The lowliest 
place in this world, to the person whom God 
made to occupy that place, is a position of rank 
and honor glorious as an angel's seat, because 
it is one which God formed an immortal being 
in his own image, and with immeasurable possi- 
bilities, to fill. George MacDonald says, "I 
would rather be what God chose to make me 
than the most glorious creature that I could 
think of ; for to have been thought about, born 
in God's thought, and then made by God, is 
the dearest, grandest, and most precious thing 
in all thinking." 

The question of small or great has no place 
here. To have been thought about at all, and 
then fashioned by God's hands to fill any place, 
is glory enough for the grandest and most 
aspiring life. And the highest place to which 
any one can attain in life is that for which he 
was designed and made. The greatest thing 
any one can do in this world is what God made 
him to do, whether it be to rule a kingdom, to 
write a nation's songs, or to keep a little home 
clean and tidy. The true problem of life is 



FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 115 

not to "get on," or to "get up," as men phrase 
it, not to be great, or to do great things, but to 
be just what God meant us to be. If we fail 
in this, though we win a place far more con- 
spicuous, our life is a failure. 

An intensely practical question, therefore, is, 
How may we find our place, — the place for 
which God made us ? How can we learn what 
he wants us to do in his great world, with its 
infinity of spheres and occupations ? How 
may we be sure that we are fulfilling our part 
in God's great plan ? In the olden days, men 
were sometimes guided to their missions by 
special revelation. In the absence of such 
supernatural direction, how may we know for 
what God made us ? 

It is very clear, for one thing, that we must 
put ourselves under God's specific guidance. 
We get this lesson from Christ's perfect life. 
He did only and always his Father's will. On 
his lips continually were words like these: "I 
must work the works of him that sent me : " 
" I came not to do mine own will, but the will 
of him that sent me." Even in the garden, in 



Il6 FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 

the hour of his bitterest agony, it was, " Nev- 
ertheless not my will, but thine, be done." 
Moment by moment he took his work from his 
Father's hand: he laid no plans of his own. 
He knew there was a definite part in the 
Father's great plan which belonged to him, and 
he wished only to do that. If we would find 
our mission, and fill our allotted place, and do 
the work assigned to us, we must do God's will, 
not our own. All our personal ambitions must 
be laid at his feet, all our plans submitted to 
him, either to be accepted, and wrought into 
his plan, or set aside for his better way. If 
we have truly given ourselves to God, we have 
nothing to say about the disposal of our lives : 
they are in his hands to do with as he pleases. 
If he interrupts us in our favorite pursuits, or 
breaks into our plans with some other work, or 
by laying us aside for a time, we should not 
chafe or fret. Our time belongs to him, and 
he knows what he wants us to do any day. If 
we are truly taking our life's direction from 
him, we must always be ready to forego our 
schemes and plans, and take instead whatever 



FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 117 

he allots. This is where the hardest battle has 
to be fought, for we are loath to give up our 
personal ambitions. When we have gotten 
thus far along, what remains is not so hard. 
One who is really ready to do God's will, and 
be just what God wants him to be, will surely 
in some way be led into his true place. 

As for the direction itself, God gives it in 
many ways. The Bible is the basis of all right 
living. There we learn the divine will and our 
duty. No one can ever find his allotted place 
in God's plan who does not follow the divine 
commandments. There is no use asking about 
our mission, unless we are walking in the 
straight and clean paths marked out by the 
Holy Scriptures. 

For specific guidance at points along the 
way, conscience, the voice of God in our own 
soul, must be listened for continually, and 
promptly and affectionately heeded. Provi- 
dence also must be watched. God opens doors 
and closes doors. He brings us face to face 
with duties. He leads us up to opportunities. 
If we are ready to be guided, and have a clear 



Il8 FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 

eye for the handwriting of Providence, we shall 
not fail to be directed in the path on which 
God wants us to walk. 

" Blindfolded and alone I stand, 
With unknown thresholds on each hand ; 
The darkness deepens as I grope, 
Afraid to fear, afraid to hope : 
Yet this one thing I learn to know 
Each day more surely as I go, 
That doors are opened, ways are made, 
Burdens are lifted, or are laid, 
By some great law, unseen and still, 
Unfathomed purpose to fulfil, 
1 Not as I will. ' " 

People sometimes chafe because, in their cir- 
cumstances, they cannot do any great things ; 
as if nothing could be really a divine mission 
unless it is something conspicuous. A mother, 
occupied with the care of her little children, 
laments that she has no time nor leisure for any 
mission that God may have marked out for her. 
Does she not know that caring well for her 
children may be the grandest thing that could 
be found for her in all the range of possible 



FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 119 

duties? Certainly for her hands, for the time 
at least, there is nothing else in all the world 
so great. Organizing missionary meetings, 
speaking at conventions, attending Dorcas 
societies, writing books, painting pictures, — 
these are all fine things when they are the 
things God gives ; but, if the mother neglects 
her children to do any of these, she has simply 
put out of her hands the largest things to take 
up those that are exceedingly small. In other 
words, that which the Master gives any one to 
do is always the grandest work he can find. 
The doing of God's will for any moment is 
ever the sublimest thing possible for that 
moment. 

Another thing to be remembered in asking 
after one's mission, is that God does not usually 
map it all out at the beginning for any one. 
When the newly converted Saul accepted Christ 
as his life's Master, and asked what he should 
do, he got for answer, only that moment's duty. 
He was to arise, and go into the city ; and 
there he would learn what to do next. That 
is the way the Lord generally shows men what 



120 FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 

their mission is, — just one step at a time, just 
one day's or one hour's work now, and then 
another and another as they go on. A young 
man at school grows anxious about what he 
shall be when he is through his course, what 
profession he shall choose, and frets and wor- 
ries because he can get no light. He wonders 
why God does not make his duty plain to him ; 
but what has the young man to do now with his 
profession or life-calling, when it must be years 
yet before he can enter upon it ? His present 
duty is all he has to think of now; and that is 
simply to attend diligently and faithfully to his 
studies, to make the best possible use of his 
time and opportunities. One step at a time 
is the way God leads. One day's duty well 
done fits for the next. 

A young school-girl is sorely perplexed over 
the problem of her life-duty : — ought she to go 
to a foreign-mission field, or devote herself to 
work at home ? It will take her at least five 
years to complete the course of education on 
which she has just entered. Very clearly she 
has nothing to do, as yet, with the question 



FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 121 

which is causing her such perplexity. Her 
present duty is all that concerns her at the 
present time ; and that is, to lay broad and 
strong foundations for a thorough education. 
What her ultimate mission in this world may 
be, God will show her in due time : about her 
mission just now, there need not be a moment's 
perplexity, for it is very plain. She has just to 
do well each day's routine of work, spending 
her time in diligent study. Common duties 
are the steps that lead upward and heavenward. 
God lights only one step of the path at a time ; 
but, as we take that step, the light falls on 
another, and so on and on, thus lighting the 
whole path for our feet, until we are led at 
last to the gate that opens into heaven. 

" So live, so act, that every hour 
May die as dies the natural flower ; 
That every word and every deed 
May bear within itself the seed 
Of future good in future need." 

The way, therefore, to find out what God's 
plan is for our life, is to surrender ourselves to 



122 FINDING ONE'S MISSION. 

him in simple consecration, and then take up, 
hour by hour, the plain duties he brings to our 
hand. No matter about our mission as a whole : 
our only concern is with the moment we are 
now living, and the thing God wants us now 
to do. If each hour's work is faithfully done, 
we shall have at the last a whole life-work faith- 
fully done. If we neglect the duties of the 
commonplace days while waiting for our mis- 
sion, we shall simply throw our lives away, and 
utterly fail to fulfil the purpose of our creation. 

" No man is born into the world whose work 
Is not born with him ; there is always work, 
And tool to work withal, for those who will : 
And blessed are the horny hands of toil. 
The busy world shoves angrily aside 
The man who stands with arms akimbo set, 
Until occasion tells him what to do ; 
And he who waits to have his task marked out 
Shall die, and leave his errand unfulfilled." 



CHAPTER XII. 

LIVING UP TO OUR BEST INTENTIONS. 

11 We hope, we aspire, we resolve, we trust, • 

When the morning calls to life and light ; 
But our hearts grow weary, and ere the night, 
Our lives are trailing in sordid dust. 

Wings for the angels, but feet for the men ! 

We must borrow the wings to find the way : 

We may hope and aspire and resolve and pray, 

But our feet must rise, or we fall again." 

J. G. Holland. 

If our best moods continually dominated our 
whole life, we should all live well. We all mean 
to live well : at least, there are times with all 
of us when we resolve to do so. New- Year's 
days, birthdays, communion Sundays, and other 
times, when the realities of life stand out in 
clearer relief than ordinarily, and impress us 
with unusual vividness, start in most of us 
serious thoughts, and inspire in us lofty aspira- 
tions and noble intentions. We are apt then 

123 



124 LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 

to make excellent resolutions, and to start off 
in new and higher planes of living. Now, it 
would be well for us if there were some way 
of perpetuating these better moods, and living 
up to these good intentions. Too often, how- 
ever, the serious impressions are but transient, 
and these is too little vitality in the good inten- 
tions and resolutions to make them really po- 
tent impulses for many days, or to give them 
permanence among the motives and forces of 
our life. 

Of course, we cannot make our lives beauti- 
ful, merely by alternately adopting resolutions 
of amendment, and wailing out dolorous con- 
fessions of failure. Life runs deeper than 
words. Beauty is not fashioned by evanescent 
good intentions. Blemishes and stains are not 
covered up, nor are flaws mended, by peniten- 
tial sighings of regret. Mere transient spasms 
of true living do not give grandeur to a life. 
If a temple is to be stable and stately, every 
stone from foundation to dome must be cut 
and set with care. If the texture of the fabric 
is to be beautiful and strong, every thread of 



. LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 1 25 

web and woof must be bright and clean, and 
the weaving must be done with uniform skill 
and care. If a life is to be admirable when 
finished, its periodical good intentions must 
become strong, self-sustaining principles, shap- 
ing its every act, and ruling all its days and 
hours. 

It ought not to be impossible to live up to 
the impulses of our best moods, or, at least, to 
do so to a much greater degree than most of us 
realize. In many of these good intentions, one 
element of weakness lies in their vagueness or 
indefiniteness. We simply resolve to be better 
this year than last, or to do more good in the 
future than in the past ; but we have no clear 
and distinct conception in our minds of the 
points in which we will be better, or of the par- 
ticular ways in which we will increase our use- 
fulness. Our ideas of living better, and doing 
greater good, are nebulous and undefined. 

We would be much more apt to succeed in 
our new purposes if we reduced them to defi- 
nite and practical shape. In what respects will 
we amend our ways ? This question starts 



126 LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 

another. What are our faults ? Wherein do we 
fail in living ? What are the mistakes we have 
been making ? The answers to these questions 
will indicate to us the particular ways in which 
we need to live better. Then, in what definite 
ways shall we strive to be more useful ? To 
what new Christian work shall we put our 
hands ? Upon what new lines of service shall 
we enter ? Just what old mistakes are we to 
avoid ? If we would bring our vague, hazy ideas 
of greater usefulness down into some practical 
forms, and then enter at once upon the execu- 
tion of our resolutions, they would be much 
more likely to become permanent, and to grow 
into our life. 

There are many people who sigh over their 
poor Christian living and their far-awayness 
from Christ, and pray much, and earnestly too, 
for more faith, more love, greater nearness to 
the Saviour, who, after all, have no well-defined 
conceptions of the better things they would like 
to attain. Their sighings are little more than 
a vague and indolent discontent. They think 
they are sincere ; but they are not, for they 



LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. \2J 

really do not want to be any better, or to have 
more of Christ, or do more in his service ; if 
they did, they would soon be out of their poor, 
unsatisfactory condition. Truly earnest long- 
ings heavenward have a wondrous lifting power. 
There is a great deal of only imagined spiritual 
aspiration. Very much of our singing, " Near- 
er, my God, to Thee," is only the weakest kind 
of religious sentimentalism. Such vapid good 
intentions come to nothing, because there really 
are no good intentions to begin with. When 
the spiritual day-dreaming gets vigor enough to 
be worthy the name of desire or purpose, the 
higher attainments longed for will soon be 
reached. We must want what we ask in 
prayer, or we shall never get it. Then we 
must help to answer our own prayers, by reach- 
ing after, and struggling toward, what we want, 
and by climbing the steep paths that lead to 
the radiant heights. 

Another element of weakness in many of our 
desires for better life and larger usefulness is, 
that we think of great and perhaps impossible 
attainments, and overlook the simple things 



128 LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 

that lie within our reach. No violent, over- 
strained exertions are necessary to a noble 
life, no superhuman efforts and achievements, 
— nothing but every-day duty faithfully done. 
The most of us must be content to live what 
are regarded as commonplace lives, without 
attracting the attention of the world, or win- 
ning the laurels of fame. We must, for the 
greater part, devote ourselves to the duties 
that spring out of our ordinary business, social, 
and domestic relations. The pressure of life's 
necessities is so great, that we cannot often 
turn aside to do things that lie outside of our 
common calling. Whatever service we render 
to Christ, must be rendered in and along the 
line of these relations, and while we are busied 
in the imperative duties which every day brings 
to our hands. 

It is just at this point that many fail. They 
spend all their life seeking for the place in this 
world which they were intended to fill : they 
never settle down to any thing with any sort 
of restful or contented feeling. They have a 
lofty, though possibly a very nebulous, ideal of 



LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 129 

a wondrously brilliant life, to which they would 
like to attain, in which their powers would find 
full and adequate scope, and where they could 
achieve great things; but in their present con- 
dition, with its limitations, they can accom- 
plish nothing worthy of their powers. So they 
go on discontented with their lot, and sighing 
for another ; and, while they sigh, the years 
glide away ; and soon they will come to the end, 
to find that they have missed every opportunity 
of doing any thing worthy of an immortal 
being in the passage from time to eternity. 

The truth is, one's vocation is never some 
far-off possibility : it is always for the present 
the simple round of duties that the passing 
hour brings. Some one has pictured the days 
as coming to us with their faces veiled ; but, 
when they have passed beyond our recall, the 
draped figures become radiant, and the gifts 
we rejected are seen to be treasures fit for 
king's houses. No day is commonplace, if only 
we had eyes to see the veiled splendors that lie 
in its opportunities, and in its plain and dull 
routine. There is no duty that comes to our 



130 LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 

hand but brings to us the possibility of kingly- 
service, with divine reward. 

We greatly mistake, therefore, if we think 
there is no opportunity for ordinary people to 
make their years radiant and beautiful by 
simply rilling them with acceptable Christian 
service. There is room in the commonest re- 
lations of life, not only for fidelity, but for 
heroism. No ministry is more pleasing to the 
Master than that of cheery and hearty faith- 
fulness to lowly duty, when there is no pen to 
write its history, nor any voice to proclaim its 
praise. To be a good husband — loving, ten- 
der, unselfish, and cherishing — or a good wife, 
— thoughtful, helpful, uncomplaining, and in- 
spiring, — is most acceptable service. To live 
well in one's place in the world, adorning one's 
calling, however lowly, doing one's most pro- 
saic work diligently and honestly, and dwelling 
in love and unselfishness with all men, is to 
live grandly. To fight well the battle with 
one's own lusts and tempers, and to be victo- 
rious in the midst of the countless temptations 
and provocations of every-day experience, is to 
be a Christian hero. 



LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 131 

There is a field, therefore, for better living 
very close at home. It is in these common 
things that most of us must make our progress, 
and win our distinction, or fail, and be defeated. 
And there is room enough in these prosaic 
duties and opportunities for very noble and 
beautiful lives. There is nothing possible to a 
human soul nobler or greater than simple faith- 
fulness. " She hath done what she could," 
was the highest commendation that ever fell 
from the Master's lips. An angel could do no 
more. When we are resolving to live more 
grandly in the future than in the past, it will 
help us to bring our eyes down from the far-off 
mountain-peaks, and from among the stars, 
where there is nothing whatever for us to do, 
and to look close about our feet, where lie many 
neglected duties, many unimproved opportuni- 
ties, and many possibilities of higher attain- 
ment in spirit, in temper, in speech, in heart. 

Another element of weakness in much of 
our resolving, is that we try to grasp too much 
of life at one time. We think of it as a whole, 
instead of taking the days one by one. Life is 



132 LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 

a mosaic, and each tiny piece must be cut with 
skill. The only way to make a perfect chain is 
to fashion each separate link with skill and 
care as it passes through our hands. The 
only way to make a radiant day is to make its 
each and every hour bright with the lustre of 
approved fidelity. The only way to have a 
year at its close stainless and beautiful, is to 
keep the days, as they pass, all pure and lovely 
with the loveliness of holy, useful living. It is 
thus, in little days, that our years come to us, 
and we have but the one small fragment to fill 
and beautify at a time. The year is a book, 
and for each day one fair white page is opened 
before us ; and we are artists, whose duty it is 
to put something beautiful on the page ; or we 
are poets, and are to write some lovely thought, 
some radiant sentence, on each leaf as it lies 
open before us ; or we are historians, and must 
give to the page some record of work or duty 
or victory to enshrine and carry away. 

It ought not to be hard to live well one day. 
Any one should be able to remember God, and 
keep his heart open toward heaven, and to 



LIVING UP TO OUR INTENTIONS. 1 33 

remember others in need and suffering about 
him, and keep his hand stretched out in help- 
fulness, for just one day. Yet that is all there 
is to do. We never have more than one day 
to live. We have no to-morrows. God never 
gives us years, or even weeks : he gives us 
only days. If we live each day well, all our 
life will, in the end, be radiant and beautiful. 



CHAPTER XIII. 

LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 

A twofold influence attends and follows 
every life : the one is planned and intentional, 
the other is unpurposed and unconscious. A 
man lives fifty years of active life in a commu- 
nity, growing from poverty to wealth ; and 
there are two classes of results left behind him 
when he is gone. There are the buildings he 
has erected, the business he has established 
and organized, the improvements he has made 
in the town, and the wealth he has accumu- 
lated : these are all purposed results. He lived 
to do these things ; he thought about them, and 
then with labor and pains wrought them out ; 
but while he has been toiling and building, with 
earnest ambition and intense energy, he has, 
day by day, been leaving behind him another 
class of results, which were not in his plans, 
and the columns of which he does not foot up 
134 



LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 135 

when he estimates how much he has made dur- 
ing his life, or which he does not bequeath when 
he writes his will. These are the things he has 
done along the years of his busy life, by the 
words he has spoken in daily intercourse with 
men, by his manners and his dispositions, by 
the little wayside ministries which he has 
wrought ofttimes without conscious thought or 
intention, and through the silent influence that 
has flowed forth from his character and example, 
as fragrance is poured out on the air by a sweet 
flow 7 er, or as the soft beams of light stream in 
welcome radiance from a star. 

Every life has this double history, and leaves 
this double record. In the ordinary reckoning 
of the results achieved by men, the purposed 
things only are counted. We say he made a 
million dollars ; or we point to the bridges he 
built, or the cathedrals he planned, or the pict- 
ures he painted, or the books he wrote ; or we 
say he travelled so many miles, and preached 
so many sermons, and made so many visits ; or 
we sum up in our funeral eulogium the great 
and conspicuous things of his career, — and we 



136 LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 

think we have given all his biography ; but we 
have not. There is a part of his history that 
is never written, that cannot be written ; and 
it is probable that in nearly every life this is 
the better part, that a good man's unconscious, 
unrecorded, unintended influence aggregates 
more in the end than his purposed acts. 

Any one who carefully notes the comparative 
value of lives in a community, will soon learn 
that the element which counts for the most, is 
that subtile thing which we call personal influ- 
ence. One may give much money to religious 
and charitable objects ; another may be an elo- 
quent talker, and his voice may often be heard in 
public meetings ; another may be enterprising, 
foremost in all progressive movements ; another 
may be scholarly, a writer, an author, an oracle 
on all questions of learning ; another may repre- 
sent the best things in art, in taste, in whatever 
is beautiful and refined, — yet not one of these 
may impress himself on the community as does 
some quiet man, without either wealth or elo- 
quence, or public spirit or scholarship, but who 
possesses that mysterious, indescribable power, 



LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 1 37 

— a beneficent personal influence. There is 
something in him more subtile than money or 
speech, or activity or beauty, — a spiritual force, 
which flows out from his life, and touches all 
other lives, and strangely affects them. It is 
to him what fragrance is to a flower, what light 
is to a lamp : it is part of himself, and yet it 
reaches outside and beyond himself. 

It is, so to speak, the projection of the man's 
own character, the flowing-out of his own life 
into other lives ; it is the energy of the man's 
spirit working, as it were, beyond his body, and 
working without hands. In the good man, it is 
goodness, — goodness dwelling in his soul, and 
pouring out like light from the windows of a 
cottage on a dark night. In the Christian, there 
is more than mere human goodness : God's 
Spirit dwells in him. Every true Christian is 
in a sense a new incarnation. St. Paul said, 
" Christ liveth in me ; " and he prayed for 
others that they might be "filled with all the 
fulness of God." The lamp that burns in a 
Christian's heart is the flame of the Divine 
Spirit, and the personal influence of a Chris- 



138 LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 

tian becomes spiritual power. It is like the 
shadow of Peter : it has a healing, life-giving 
effect wherever it falls. Such a man goes about 
his daily duty as other men do ; but while he 
is engaged in common things, he is continually 
dropping seeds of blessing, which spring up 
behind him in heavenly beauty and fragrance. 

Every good life is constantly scattering these 
unconscious, unpurposed influences. A mother 
works hard all day in her home, keeping her 
house in order, preparing comforts for her fam- 
ily, watching over her children. She can tell, 
in the evening, just how many garments she 
has mended, how many rooms she has swept, 
and the entire day's history ; but all day long 
she was patient, gentle, kind. At every turn, 
she had a bright smile for her children ; she 
had cheering words and fond attentions for her 
husband ; she had a pleasant welcome for the 
friends who called : in all these things she was 
unconsciously scattering seeds that will spring 
up in sweet flowers in other hearts and lives. 

Who doubts which of these two ministries is 
in reality the richer and the more effective? 



LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 139 

Yet the tired woman does not think of count- 
ing these wayside influences and services at all 
in her retrospect of the day's work. If she 
could do so, it would greatly cheer her, and 
strengthen her for a new day's life when it be- 
gins. She ofttimes comes to the day's close 
discouraged and depressed, because she has 
seemed to do so little beyond the endless rou- 
tine of her household duties. When she sits 
down with her Bible, after all are quiet in her 
household, and looks back, she can scarcely 
recall one earnest word she has spoken for her 
Master. The whole day has been filled with 
earthly commonplace, and she thinks of it with 
pain and disheartenment ; yet if she has lived 
sweetly and patiently amid her toils and worries, 
dropping cheerful words in the ears of her house- 
hold, singing bits of song as she went about 
her work, bearing herself with love and faith 
amid all the experiences of the day, she has 
unconsciously performed a ministry of blessing, 
whose value she can never know till she gets 
to heaven. 

A bit of written biography fits in here. A 



140 LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 

young man, away from home, slept in the same 
room with another young man, a stranger. 
Before retiring for the night, he knelt down, 
as was his wont, and silently prayed. His com- 
panion had long resisted the grace of God ; but 
this noble example aroused him, and was the 
means of his awakening. In old age he testi- 
fied, after a life of rare usefulness, " Nearly half 
a century has rolled away, with all its multi- 
tudinous events, since then ; but that little 
chamber, that humble couch, that silent, pray- 
ing youth, are still present to my imagination, 
and will never be forgotten amid the splendors 
of heaven, and through the ages of eternity." 
It was but a simple act of common faithful- 
ness, unostentatious, and without thought or 
purpose of doing good, save as the prayer 
would bless his own soul ; yet there went out 
from it an unconscious influence, which gave to 
the world a ministry of rare power and value. 

We do not realize the importance of this un- 
conscious part of our life-ministry. It goes on 
continually. In every greeting we give to 
another on the street, in every moment's con- 



LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 141 

versation, in every letter we write, in every 
contact with other lives, there is a subtile influ- 
ence that goes from us that often reaches far- 
ther, and leaves a deeper impression, than the 
things themselves that we are doing at the time. 
After all, it is life itself, sanctified life, that is 
God's holiest and most effective ministry in 
this world, — pure, sweet, patient, earnest, un- 
selfish, loving life. It is not so much what we 
do in this world, as what we are> that tells in 
spiritual results and impressions. A good life 
is like a flower, which, though it neither toil 
nor spin, yet ever pours out a rich perfume, 
and thus performs a holy ministry. 

There is no place where this unconscious 
ministry is so potent as in the home. The 
lessons which parents teach their children are 
not one-thousandth part so important as the 
life they live before them day after day. This 
incident has appeared in some of the newspa- 
pers, and, though so homely, has its illustrative 
value : A gentleman who has a golden-haired 
little daughter, three years of age, took her to 
church for the first time the other day. At 



142 LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 

home she causes much amusement by attempts 
in cunning baby-fashion to do just as her father 
does. It was an Episcopal church, and she sat 
through the service and sermon with mature 
gravity and sedateness. It happened to be 
communion Sunday ; and, being a communi- 
cant, her father went with others toward the 
chancel, unconscious that his little daughter 
was following him. As he knelt, and bowed 
his head, she took her place beside him, and 
bowed her head upon her tiny hands. The 
story is an example of what is going on per- 
petually in every home. The child is not 
merely imitating the parents' acts, but is drink- 
ing in their spirit, as flowers drink in the morn- 
ing dew and the sunshine, to reproduce the 
same in permanent dispositions, tempers, and 
principles. 

How, then, can we give direction and charac- 
ter to this unconscious ministry of our lives ? 
When we do things voluntarily and with pur- 
pose, we can give shape to the effects ; but 
how can we guard this perpetual outgoing of 
unintended influence ? Only by looking well 



LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 143 

to our hearts. It is what we are when we are 
not posing before men, that we are really ; and 
it is this which counts in this subtile minis- 
try. We must be, therefore, in our own inner, 
secret lives what we want our permanent influ- 
ence to be. This we can become, only by seek- 
ing more and more the permeation of our whole 
being by the loving, indwelling Spirit of Christ. 
No one will say that this chance and unde- 
signed ministry of good lives is not under God's 
direction. Though it is not in our thought to 
scatter the blessings which we thus uncon- 
sciously give out, it is certainly in his thought. 
Every influence of our lives, God uses as he 
will, to do good to whomsoever it pleases him 
to send the blessing. 

" Call you this chance ? A tiny seed 
Is blown by wandering winds that speed 
O'er land and sea. On ocean's breast 
'Tis swept and whirled, then flung to rest 

Upon a lonely isle, 'mid reed 
And sedge, and many a straggling weed. 
Lo ! soon the isle a flowery mead 
Becomes, with brilliant blossoms drest. 

Call you this chance ? 



144 LIFE'S DOUBLE MINISTRY. 

Ofttimes a word or kindly deed 
Bestowed upon some soul in need, — 
Some soul where Love is never guest, — 
Transforms the heart by hate opprest, 
Till flowers the noisome weeds succeed. 
Call you this chance ? " 

Part of our every morning prayer should be, 
that God would use our influence for himself, 
and take the smallest fragments of power for 
good that drop from our lives, and employ them 
all for his glory, and as seeds to grow into beau- 
ty in some of this world's desert spots. 



CHAPTER XIV. 

THE MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 

" It is not the deed that we do, 

Though the deed be never so fair, 
But the love that the dear Lord looketh for, 
Hidden with holy care, 
In the heart of the deed so fair." 

There are few hearts in which there do 
not lie kindly wishes for others. The man 
must be depraved indeed who has only malign 
thoughts and desires for his fellow-men. Every 
Christian at least wishes others well, since love 
is the law of the regenerated life. There are 
occasions, too, when the good wishes find their 
way to the lips in kindly words. We say 
"Good-morning" when we meet a neighbor, 
and " Good-by " when we part from him. When 
our friends' birthdays come, we are in the habit 
of finding many delicate and pleasant ways of 
expressing our good will. The Christmas-time 

145 



146 MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 

and the New-Year usually thaw out of our 
hearts the laggard good feelings, prompting us 
to many acts and words of kindness. It is 
well that our hearts have their seasons of gen- 
erous blossoming, even if they are so brief, 
and are fixed by the almanac. It is well that 
any thing whatsoever has power to touch our 
lips with fire from the altar of love, and teach 
us to speak the gentle words which the lives 
about us are so hungry to hear. 

One of the saddest things about life is, that, 
with such boundless power to give cheer to 
others by our speech, most of us pass through 
the world in silence, locking up in our own 
hearts the thoughtful and helpful words which 
we might speak, and which, if spoken, would 
minister so much strength and inspiration. 
Hearts are breaking with sorrow ; men are 
bowing under burdens too heavy for them ; 
duty is too large, battles are too sore. On 
every hand, and in every life, there is need for 
love's ministry, that men and women may not 
fail. Nor is it large and costly service that 
usually is needed : the kindly utterance of a 



MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 147 

kindly feeling will often give all the impulse 
and inspiration required. And the feeling is 
always close at hand, wanting but to be put 
into honest words, and spoken where the strug- 
gle is going on. Yet many of us let the good 
will lie in our heart unuttered, and stand by in 
silence while our brother beside us goes down 
in defeat which one word of ours would have 
changed into victory. It is not the want of love 
that is our fault, but the penuriousness which 
locks up the love, and will not give it out to 
bless others. Is any miserliness so mean ? We 
let hearts starve to death close beside us, when 
in our hands is the food to keep them living, 
and make them strong : then when they lie in 
the dust of defeat, we come with our love to 
make funeral-wreaths for them, and speak elo- 
quent eulogiums to their memory. 

" What silences we keep year after year, 
With those who are most near to us and dear ; 
We live beside each other day by day, 
And speak of myriad things, but seldom say 
The full, sweet word that lies just in our reach, 
Beneath the commonplace of common speech. 



148 MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 

Then out of sight and out of reach they go, — 

These close, familiar friends who loved us so ; 

And sitting in the shadow they have left, 

Alone, with loneliness, and sore bereft, 

We think with vain regret of some kind word 

That once we might have said, and they have heard." 

How much better it would be if, at all times, 
we gave freer rein to our lips in speaking 
kindly and cheering words ! It is truly very 
sad when nothing less than the death of our 
friends can draw from our slow and selfish 
hearts the debt of love and of helpfulness that 
we owe them. 

" This is the cruel cross of life, to be 
Full-visioned only when the ministry 
Of death has been fulfilled, and in the place 
Of some dear presence is but empty space." 

The warmest utterances then of love's good 
will cannot stir again the heart's chilled cur- 
rents. It is too late to cheer the defeated 
spirit to new and victorious struggle. There 
is a time for the angel ministry : it is when 
the conflict is waging. When death has come, 



MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 1 49 

or failure or defeat, the opportunity is past for- 
ever. 

The good wishes of friends do not, by their 
mere utterance, become realities in our lives : 
if they did, how rich most of us would be, and 
how happy ! Good wishes, however, may be 
made to come true : they may be turned into 
prayers by those who make them, and, passing 
through the hands of Christ, may be changed 
from mere empty breath into blessings that 
shall enrich our lives, or feed our souls, or 
shine like sparkling gems upon our brows. 
The best way for our friends to get good 
things to us, is to pass them through Christ's 
hands. 

No doubt, many of the good wishes that fall 
from the lips of those we meet are but empty 
forms, thoughtlessly uttered, with neither real 
desire nor fervor in the heart. Many of them, 
also, that are sincere enough, are wishes for 
very empty things. Happiness is the word 
into which so often the wish is coined, yet 
mere happiness is not by any means life's best 
blessing : it is but the ripple of laughter on 



150 MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 

life's surface. One may be happy, and never 
have one deep thought of life. Happiness is 
the product of merely earthly blessings, — 
friends, honors, pleasures, gold, — and these 
are the cheapest, and least valuable, and least 
satisfying things life can give. Wise and 
thoughtful friends will wish better things for 
us, — things that we can keep, things that will 
live on in us through all life's changes, and last 
over into the eternal years. 

" Oh, the rare things which can never be brought 
From far-away countries, but still must be sought 
Through working and waiting, and anguish of thought ! 

The patience that comes to the heart, as it tries 
To hear, through all discord and turbulent cries, 
The songs of the armies that march to the skies ; 

The courage that fails not, nor loses its breath 

In stress of the battle, but smilingly saith, 

1 I'll measure my strength with disaster and death ; ' 

The love that through doubting and pain will increase ; 
The longing and restlessness, calmed into peace 
That is perfect and satisfied, never to cease, — 



MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 151 

These, these are the dear things ! No king on his throne 

Can buy them away from the poor and unknown 

Who make them, through labor or anguish, their own." 



It is in such qualities as these that we should 
seek to grow. Happiness is but like the spark- 
ling dew that shines on the leaves and grasses 
in the summer morning, but is gone as soon as 
the sun's heat touches it. Life itself is deeper 
than happiness, and true blessings are those 
that are carved in life's own fibre. The good 
wishes that are of most worth are those that 
are for qualities of character, which we can car- 
ry with us through the pearl gate. The friends 
who think only of this world's beauties and 
honors and possessions and attainments when 
they wish us well, do not understand the table 
of values by which heaven estimates every 
thing. 

How to get these great things into our lives 
is the question. Our best and truest friends 
cannot put them into our lives by any power 
of love : they may utter the wishes, and may 
translate them into prayers, but only we our- 



152 MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 

selves can take the benedictions and the an- 
swered prayers into our life. This we cannot do 
by mere resolving and purposing. New-Year or 
birthday resolutions are good enough as such ; 
but unless they are gotten into the heart and 
life, as well as down in neat lines on paper, they 
will amount to little. Intentions may be very 
fine, but they must be lived out to become of 
practical worth. Rainbows are splendid pict- 
ures as they arch over the meadows and fields, 
but they vanish while you gaze at them : no 
hand is alert enough to grasp them, and hold 
them down upon earth. It is so with the love- 
ly visions of excellence or of beauty that glow 
before us in our better moments : unless we set 
ourselves at once to work them into life, they 
will vanish into air. We must get our rain- 
bows down out of the skies, and into our 
hearts. We must take the good wishes of our 
friends, and turn them into life : we must let 
them into our spirits, as the bare, briery rod in 
the garden lets the sunshine and the rain into 
itself, and transmutes them into blooming, fra- 
grant roses. 



MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 1 53 

Just how to do this, is an important question. 
The Bible emphasizes the fact that all growth 
of character must begin within. We are to be 
transformed by the renewing of our minds. 
Our hearts make our lives. What we are in 
heart, in spirit, in the inner life, we are really 
before God ; and that, too, we shall ultimately 
become in actual character, in outward feature. 
The disposition makes the face. Every crea- 
ture builds its own house to live in, and builds 
it just like itself. Coarseness builds coarsely : 
taste builds tastefully. A corrupt heart works 
through in the end, and changes all without 
into moral decay like itself. Jealousy, envy, 
bitterness, selfishness, all write their own image 
and signature on the features, if you give them 
time enough. A pure, beautiful soul builds a 
holy and divine dwelling for itself. In one of 
Goethe's tales, he tells of a wonderful lamp 
which was placed in a fisherman's hut, and 
changed it all to silver. The lamp of Christ's 
love, set in a human heart, transforms the life 
from sinfulness and earthliness into the like- 
ness of Christ's own Spirit. To make good 



154 MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 

wishes come true, we must first get them into 
our heart, and then they will soon become real 
in our life. 

No wish is more commonly expressed than 
that we may be happy, but true happiness de- 
pends altogether on the heart. A heart at 
peace fills our world with peace. Light shin- 
ing in the bosom gives us light wherever we 
may be. The miners carry little lamps on their 
caps ; and, wherever they move in the dark 
mines, there is light. So it is with us, if in us 
the lamp of joy shines. The world may grow 
very dark sometimes, but round about us there 
is always light. We shall surely be happy in 
the truest sense, if we have Christ's joy in our 
hearts. This is a lamp that shines through 
the longest night : no storm blows it out ; in- 
deed, its beams grow brighter the denser the 
gloom about us, and the fiercer the storm. 
Christ's joy was, in his own life, a lamp which 
was not quenched, even by the awful darkness 
of the cross. 

If we would realize the wishes of our friends 
for joy, we must be sure to get the love of 



MINISTRY OF WELL-WISHING. 1 55 

Christ into our hearts, and then we shall 
always have our own lamp, and shall find glad- 
ness wherever we go. We need not, then, in 
any case greatly worry about our circumstances : 
if we are right within, all will be well. If the 
lamp is kept burning within the chamber, it 
will be light there, however deep the gloom 
outside. 



CHAPTER XV. 

HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

" 'Tis a little thing 
To give a cup of water, yet its draught 
Of cool refreshment, drained by fevered lips, 
May give a shock of pleasure to the frame, 
More exquisite than when nectarean juice 
Renews the life of joy in happiest hours. 
It is a little thing to speak a phrase 
Of common comfort, which by daily use 
Has almost lost its sense ; yet on the ear 
Of him who thought to die unmourned, 
'Twill fall like choicest music." Talfourd. 

There are not a few good people, with be- 
nevolent hearts and kindly impulses, who think 
they cannot do much good in the world because 
they have no money to give. They envy those 
who have wealth at their disposal, and who can 
so easily lift off the burdens of the poor, and 
give substantial aid to those who are in dis- 
tress. They lament, that, because of their own 

poverty, they cannot relieve the human needs 
156 



HELPING WITHO UT MONE V. 157 

which they see about them. They do not 
know of any way of doing good without money, 
and sit discouraged in the midst of human 
needs and sorrows, not supposing that they 
with their empty hands could render any help 
or comfort. 

No doubt, there are necessities which money 
only can relieve. Love, however rich and true 
and tender, will not pay the widow's rent, nor 
buy medicines for the sick man, nor put shoes 
on the orphan's feet. There always will be 
need for almsgiving while sin and sorrow con- 
tinue on the earth, and he who has money to 
give must give it. "Whoso hath the world's 
goods, and beholdeth his brother in need, and 
shutteth up his compassion from him, how doth 
the love of God abide in him ? " Our professed 
love for Christ will, if real, exhibit itself in love 
to his friends who are in need. We cannot 
now serve Christ in person with our acts and 
ministries, for he does not need what we can 
give ; but his people are with us, and what 
we do for them we do for him. One of the 
old Christmas legends illustrates this truth. 



158 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

Among the Saxons the custom prevailed of 
burning the Yule-log at the Christmas-tide. 
" A selfish man, who had plenty of money but 
no sympathy, was keeping his Christmas all 
alone ; and out of deference to the day, he kept 
a little log burning with a very feeble flame. 
As he shivered in the chilly atmosphere of his 
desolate room, he fell asleep and dreamed. In 
his dream he heard a voice which drew his 
attention to a beautiful child who stood near 
him, and said, 'Jesus is cold.' With an impa- 
tient movement, the selfish man stirred the fire 
a little, and said, ' Why don't you go to the 
farmhouse down the lane ? You'll be warm 
enough there.' — ' Yes,' replied the child ; 
'but you make me cold, you are so cold.' — ■ 
' Then, what can I do for you ? ' — ' You can 
give me a gold coin.' With a great deal of 
reluctance, the money-chest was opened, and a 
gold coin was given to the child. He took it. 
Instantly the dingy room became bright and 
cheerful, as the child hung up some laurel and 
holly, saying, * These are for life ; ' and placed 
two candles on the shelf, saying, 'These are 



HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 159 

for light;' and stirred the fire, saying, 'That 
is for love.' Then the door was thrown open, 
and a poor widow and a sick man, and orphan 
children, were brought in and seated at a boun- 
tiful repast, while the child kept saying, 'Jesus 
is warm now ; ' and the selfish man found that 
he also was enjoying the scene, so that he 
presently confessed, ' I think that I am warmer 
too.' Then the child suddenly disappeared, 
and in his place there was a divine presence ; 
and solemnly the words were pronounced, 
' Although I am in heaven, I am everywhere ; 
for everywhere is heaven if I am there. I can- 
not suffer as I once suffered ; but whenever my 
children are cold or hungry, or persecuted or 
neglected, I suffer with them ; and whenever 
they are warm and fed, and sheltered and 
loved, I rejoice with them ; so that Jesus is 
often cold, and Jesus is often warm,' " 

There is need ofttimes for money, and those 
who have it must use it to relieve the needs of 
their suffering neighbors. Yet it should be 
remembered that the help which human lives 
need, in nine cases out of ten, is not money- 



160 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

help. "Silver and gold have I none," said 
Peter to the lame man at the Beautiful Gate, 
"but such as I have give I thee." And what 
he gave was infinitely better than gold or 
silver would have been. He said to him, " In 
the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth, rise up 
and walk." Then, taking the lame man by 
the hand, he lifted him up ; and at once his 
weak limbs became strong, so that he could 
walk alone, needing no longer to sit by the 
temple entrance, and ask for alms. Better help 
had been given him than any alms the poor 
man ever received. 

This story is a parable as well as a fact. Its 
lesson is, that there are better things to give 
than gold and silver. If we can put new life 
and hope into the heart of a discouraged man, 
so that he rises out of his weak despair, and 
takes his place again in the ranks of active 
life, we have done a far better thing for him 
than if we had put our hands into our pockets, 
and given him money to help him nurse a little 
longer his miserable and unmanly despair. 
The truest sympathy is not that weak emotion 



HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 161 

which only sits down and weeps with a suf- 
ferer, imparting no courage or hope, but that 
wiser love, which, while it is touched by his 
pain and grief, and feels tenderly toward him, 
seeks to put new strength into his heart, to 
enable him to endure his suffering in a vic- 
torious way. 

What most people really need in their trou- 
bles, is not to have the burden lifted off, or 
even lightened, but* to have their own hearts 
strengthened with fresh cheer and hope, so 
that they shall not fail in their duty, and that 
they may overcome in their struggles. Not 
assistance in carrying the load, but a new in- 
spiration of courage and energy, that they may 
carry it themselves, is for most men the wisest 
help. The true problem of living is not to get 
along easily, with the least exertion and the 
fewest crosses, but to grow by every experience 
into stronger men : hence we show real unkind- 
ness to those who are enduring hardship, when 
we seek merely to make life easier for them, 
regardless of their own highest good. Usually 
it is a great deal better for people to fight their 



1 62 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

own battles through, and carry their own bur- 
dens, and bear unlightened the crosses God 
gives them to carry. He knows better than we 
do what they need, and is ever watching, that 
the trial may not become more than they shall 
be able to bear. He will have relief ready 
when it is wisest that there should be relief. 
We may interfere with God's discipline when 
we come running up with our help at every 
moment of stress. By encouragement and 
cheer and inspiration, we may put new hope 
and energy into hearts that are fainting; but 
usually that is the only aid we should give. It 
is always vastly better to give a man something 
to do, by which he can earn his own bread, than 
to put the bread into his hand, and leave him 
idle. In the former case, we encourage him to 
be brave and manly : in the latter, we make it 
easy for him to be weak and despairing, and rob 
him of a lesson which God had set for him to 
learn. It is the poorest kindness to work out 
a child's school-examples for him, and to tell 
him the answers to the questions assigned to 
him. In doing so, we make the lessons of little 



HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 163 

or no use to him. The mere having of correct 
answers is a matter of small importance to him 
in comparison with the mental discipline to be 
gotten from the personal and even painful search 
after the truth. We can show him no greater 
unkindness than to make his lessons easy for 
him by doing all the hard part for him. The 
truly kind thing is, to encourage him to solve 
the examples, and to search out the answers for 
himself. Each bit of knowledge which he gets 
for himself through persistent struggle, he will 
keep forever. It is then his own, by virtue of 
search and discovery, and he will never lose it : 
besides, the wrestling with the hard problem has 
added new power to his own mental faculties, 
and the victory over the difficulty has inspired 
him with fresh hope for new struggles. The 
same is true in all spheres of life. We may do 
others the greatest harm by unwisely helping 
them. If having an easy life were the highest 
aim, it would be better that we should lift off 
every burden under which others bow, and do 
every hard thing for them, and save them 
from every struggle and difficulty. But life is 



1 64 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

a school, and tasks and hardships and battles 
and toils and sufferings are lessons set for us, 
by which we are to be trained and disciplined 
into strength and nobleness : therefore, he who 
tries only to make easy paths for another robs 
him of that experience by which God designed 
to make a man of him. 

Hence, they are the best comforters and 
helpers of their fellow-men who go about with 
large hopefulness and cheerfulness in their own 
hearts, trying to put a little more hope and 
cheer into the life of every one they meet. 
Gifts of money, ofttimes, while they relieve 
immediate distress, and make life for one hour 
easier, only help to encourage disheartenment, 
and to perpetuate nervelessness and indolence. 
It would be a great deal better, by a few brave 
words, to incite the person to rise up, and grasp 
life anew, and conquer for himself. 

It is evident, from this view of what is best 
for men, that we can all do a great deal of good, 
and of the wisest, truest good, in this world, 
without having much money to bestow. If we 
have not gold and silver to give, we can take 



HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 165 

by the hand those who have fallen in the way, 
and help them to rise again ; we can put fresh 
courage into the hearts of the faint, so that 
they can take up their burdens afresh, and start 
forward once more in the race ; we can give 
cheer and comfort to those who are weary 
through toil or through sorrow ; we can impart 
inspirations of joy, and kindle new hope in the 
bosoms of those who have begun to lag behind ; 
we can make life a little easier for every one 
we meet, not by taking any thing from his bur- 
den, but by making him more able to bear it. 
And in the end, although we may never be 
able to give a dollar of money to relieve dis- 
tress, it may be seen that the blessings we 
have scattered, or have gotten into people's 
very lives, are far more in number, and greater 
in value, than if, with lavish hand, we had 
been dispensing gold and silver all along our 
years. 

There is never an end of opportunities for 
such personal helpfulness as this. There is a 
rich, possible wayside ministry, for instance, 
made up of countless small courtesies, gentle 



1 66 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

words, mere passing touches on the lives of 
those we casually meet ; impulses given by put- 
ting a little more warmth into our ordinary 
salutations ; influences flowing directly or indi- 
rectly from the things we do, and the words we 
speak. For example, we meet a friend on the 
street, whose heart is heavy : we stop a moment 
in passing, to speak a word of thoughtful cheer 
and hope ; and it sings in his breast all day, like 
a note of angel song. We walk a little way 
with a young man who is in danger of turning 
out of the path of safety, and we let fall a sin- 
cere word of kindly interest in him, or of affec- 
tionate warning, which may help to save him. 
Amid the busiest scenes, when engaged in the 
most momentous labors, we may yet carry on a 
never-ceasing ministry of personal helpfulness, 
whose results shall spring up like flowers in the 
path behind us, or echo in the hearts of others 
like notes of holy song, or glow in other lives 
in touches of radiant beauty. 

It is related of Leonardo da Vinci, that in 
his boyhood, when he saw caged birds exposed 
for sale on the streets of Florence, he would 



HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 1 67 

buy them, and set them free. It was a rare 
trait in a boy, and spoke of a noble heart full 
of genuine sympathy. As we go about the 
streets, we find many caged birds which we 
may set free, imprisoned joys that we may lib- 
erate, by the power that is in us of helping 
others. Naturalists say that the stork, having 
most tenderly fed its young, will sail under 
them when they first attempt to fly, and, if 
they begin to fall, will bear them up, and 
support them ; and that, when one stork is 
wounded by the sportsman, the able ones gath- 
er about it, put their wings under it, and try 
to carry it away. These instincts in the bird 
teach us the lesson of helpfulness. We should 
come up close to those who are in any way over- 
burdened or weak or faint, and, putting our own 
strength underneath them, help them along ; 
and when another fellow-being is wounded or 
crushed, whether by sorrow or by sin, it is our 
duty to gather about him, and try to lift him 
up, and save him. There is scarcely a limit 
to our possibilities of helpfulness in these 
ways. 



1 68 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

" Poor indeed thou must be, if around thee 

Thou no ray of light and joy canst throw ; 
If no silken cord of love hath bound thee 

To some little world, through weal or woe ; 
If no dear eyes thy tender love can brighten, 

No fond voices answer to thine own ; 
If no brother's sorrow thou canst lighten 

By daily sympathy and gentle tone. 
Daily struggling, though enclosed and lonely, 

Every day a rich reward will give : 
Thou wilt find by hearty striving only, 

And truly loving, thou canst truly live ! " 

" There is a man," said his neighbor, speak- 
ing of the village carpenter, " who has done 
more good, I really believe, in this community 
than any other person who ever lived in it. 
He cannot talk very well in a prayer-meeting, 
and he doesn't often try. He isn't worth two 
thousand dollars, and it's very little he can put 
down on subscription-papers for any object. 
But a new family never moves into the village 
that he does not find them out, to give them a 
neighborly welcome, and to offer any little ser- 
vice he can render. He is always on the look- 



HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 169 

out to give strangers a seat in his pew at 
church. He is always ready to watch with a 
sick neighbor, and look after his affairs for him. 
I have sometimes thought, that he and his wife 
keep house-plants in winter just to be able to 
send flowers to invalids. He finds time for a 
pleasant word for every child he meets ; and 
you'll see the children climbing into his own 
one-horse wagon, when he has no other load. 
He really seems to have a genius for helping 
folks in all sorts of common ways, and it does 
me good every day just to meet him on the 
street." This picture, though in homely set- 
ting, it may do some one good to look at ; so it 
is framed here, and left on this page. 

Thus, without money, we can make our lives 
abundantly useful in this world of need. Sym- 
pathy is better than money : so is courage, so 
is cheer, so is hope. It is better always to give 
ourselves than to give our money : certainly we 
should give ourselves with whatever else we 
may give. "The gift without the giver is 
bare." Christ himself gave no money ; but 



170 HELPING WITHOUT MONEY. 

every life that came near to him in faith, went 
away enriched and helped. He gave love, and 
love is the brightest and richest coin minted in 
this world. And all of us can give love : none 
are too poor for that. 



CHAPTER XVI. 

TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 

The element of time is a vital matter in 
many duties. Done at the right moment, there 
is a blessing in them ; delayed, they were as 
well not done at all. If we sleep through the 
hour for duty, we may as well sleep on after 
the hour. Waking then will not avail to accom- 
plish that which we were set to do. 

There are many applications of this princi- 
ple. Whatever we do for our friends, we must 
do when they need our help. If one is sick, 
the time to show our affection and our sym- 
pathy is while the sickness continues, and not 
after the friend is well again. If we allow him 
to pass through his illness without showing 
him any attention, there is no use, when he is 
going about again, for us to wake up, and begin 
to lavish kindness upon him : he does not need 

it now, and it will do him no good. 

171 



172 TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 

If one of our friends is passing through some 
sore struggle with temptation, and is in danger 
of being overcome, then is the time to come up 
close alongside of him, and put the strength 
of our love under his weakness to support him. 
If we fail him then, we may almost as well let 
him go on alone altogether after that. Of 
what use is sympathy when the struggle is 
over? Of what use is help when the battle 
has been fought through, and won without us ? 
Or, suppose the friend was not victorious ; sup- 
pose he failed in the battle, — failed because no 
one came to him to help him, because we came 
not with the sustaining strength of our sym- 
pathy ; suppose that, left to struggle unaided 
with enemies or difficulties or adversities, he 
was defeated, and sank down crushed and hope- 
less, — is there any use in our hurrying up to 
him now to proffer our assistance ? Is not the 
time past when help could avail him ? Can our 
sympathy now enable him to retrieve what he 
has lost ? Can our faithfulness to-day atone 
for our unfaithfulness yesterday ? 

Most of us are in some way the guardians of 



TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 173 

other souls. The time to fulfil our duty of 
guardianship is when the dangers are immi- 
nent. There is no use for the look-out on the 
ship to become vigilant only after the vessel is 
among the rocks. There is no use for the 
sentinel, in the time of war, to arouse and 
begin to watch when the enemy has stolen in 
and captured the field. 

Are you your brother's keeper? Are you 
set to watch against danger to his soul ? Are 
you a parent, whose duty it is to guard your 
own children against the perils of sin that lurk 
in ambush all about them ? Are you a teacher, 
with a class of young people intrusted to your 
care, to shield and train and keep ? Are you 
a sister, with brothers dear to you, whom you 
are to protect from temptation ? Are you a 
brother, and have you sisters tender and ex- 
posed to danger, whose defender you should 
be ? Are you a friend, and is there one beset 
by perils, over whom God has set you as guide 
or protector ? Are you watching, or are you 
sleeping ? Remember that the time to watch 
is before the danger has done its deadly work. 



174 TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 

When, through your negligence, it has come, 
and has destroyed the precious life, you may 
almost as well sleep on. Watching then ever 
so faithfully will not undo the evil which is 
done. 

In the preparation for duty or for struggle in 
our personal life, the same principle applies. 
There is a time for this preparation, when it 
can be made ; and if it is not made then, it 
cannot be made at all. It is a rule of provi- 
dential leading, that opportunity is always 
given to every one to prepare for whatever 
part he is to take in life, and for whatever ex- 
perience he is ordained to meet. The days 
come to us linked one to another, so that 
simple faithfulness to-day always prepares us 
for the duty of to-morrow. Or the days are 
like steps on a stairway, each one meant to 
lift our feet, and make us ready for the next. 
If one only embraces and uses his opportu- 
nities as they come to him, one by one, he 
will never be surprised by any sudden emer- 
gency in life, whether of duty or of trial, 
for which he will not be ready. For example, 



TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 175 

before life's stern, fierce conflicts, which put 
manhood's strongest fibre to the test, we have 
childhood and youth as seasons for calm prepa- 
ration. He that rightly improves these seasons 
is fully ready for whatever life may bring. 

It is just because these opportunities for 
preparation come to us so quietly, and with- 
out announcement, not recognized by us at the 
time as important, or as carrying in them any 
elements of destiny for us, that so many fail to 
improve them. The school-boy does not see 
what good it will do him to know the simple 
things that are set as his daily tasks, and 
neglects to learn them. Twenty, forty years 
afterward, he fails in the position to which he 
is called, because he slurred his boyhood les- 
sons in the quiet school-days long ago. The 
young apprentice takes no pains to perfect 
himself in the trade he has chosen, and con- 
sequently is only a third or fourth class work- 
man all his life, while diligence in youth would 
have prepared him for highest excellence. The 
young professional man dislikes the dry drudg- 
ery that the early years bring to him, and neg- 



176 TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 

lects it, waiting until some great opportunity 
comes to lift him into prominence. The oppor- 
tunity comes at length, but he fails in it, 
because he has not improved the long series of 
preparatory steps that came before. 

On the other hand, a school-boy does every 
task faithfully. He never slights a lesson ; he 
goes thoroughly over every day's studies ; he 
does not see, any more than the other, of what 
particular use these things will be to him when 
he is a man, in active life, nor does he ask : his 
only care is to be faithful now in every duty. 
Years later he rises to high places which he 
never could have filled had he slurred his boy- 
hood's tasks. A physician is suddenly called 
to take charge of a critical case, requiring the 
best skill in the world. He is successful, and 
wins fame for himself, because in the long, quiet 
years of obscure practice he has been diligent. 
If he had not been faithful in those years of 
routine work, he must have failed when the 
great opportunity came. He could not have 
made the necessary preparation at the moment 
when suddenly called to act. The case could 



TIMELINESS IN DUTY. If? 

only be met by the instant use of knowledge 
and skill already acquired and available. 

It is a secret worth knowing and remember- 
ing, that the truest, and indeed the only possi- 
ble, preparation for life's duties or trials, is 
made by simple fidelity in whatever each day 
brings. A day squandered anywhere may 
prove the dropped stitch from which the whole 
web will begin to ravel. One lesson neglected 
may prove to have contained the very knowl- 
edge for the want of which, far along in the 
course, the student may fail. One opportunity 
let slip may be the first step in a ladder leading 
to eminence or power, but no higher rounds of 
which can be gained, because the first was not 
taken. We never know what is important, or 
when we are standing at the open doors of 
great opportunities, in life. The most insignifi- 
cant duty that offers may be the first lesson in 
preparation for a noble mission : if we despise 
or neglect it, we miss the grand destiny, the 
gate to which was open just for that one mo- 
ment. Indeed, every hour of life holds the 
keys of the next, and possibly of many hours 



178 TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 

more : to fail of our duty in any one of them, 
may be to lose the most splendid opportunity 
through all life to the end. 

So the times of preparation come silently 
and unawares ; and many neglect them, not 
knowing what depends upon them : but neg- 
lected, and allowed to slip away, they can never 
be regained. The man who finds himself in 
the presence of a great duty or opportunity 
which he cannot take up or accept, because he 
is not prepared for it, cannot then go back to 
make the needful preparation. The soldier 
cannot learn the art of war in the face of the 
battle. The Christian cannot, in an unexpected 
emergency of temptation, gather in a moment 
all needed spiritual power. Not to be ready in 
advance for great duties or great needs, is to 
fail. 

The lesson is important, and has infinite ap- 
plications. You cannot go back to-day to do 
the work you neglected to do yesterday. You 
cannot make preparation for life when the bur- 
den of life is on you. Opportunities never re- 
turn. They must be taken on the wing, or they 



TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 1 79 

cannot be taken at all. There is a time for 
every duty ; done then, its issues and results 
may be infinite and eternal : deferred or neg- 
lected, it may never be worth while to take it 
up again. 

w Muffled and dumb, the hypocritic days, 
And marching single in an endless file, 
Bring diadems or fagots in their hands. 
To each they offer gifts after his will, — 
Bread, kingdoms, stars, and heaven that holds them all. 
I, in my pleached garden, watched the pomp, 
Forgot my morning wishes, hastily 
Took a few herbs and apples, and the day 
Turned and departed silent: I, too late, 
Under her solemn fillet saw the scorn." 

Many of us in our later years have in our 
hands only the poorest things of life, — with- 
ered leaves, faded flowers, straws, and bits of 
worthless tinsel, while we can see afar in 
their bright glory the kingdoms, diadems, and 
crowns which we have missed, which might 
have been ours had we but taken them when 
they were offered to us. Let the young learn 
the lesson, and miss no chance that life brings, 



180 TIMELINESS IN DUTY. 

and refuse no blessing which the commonest 
day presents, in whatever plainness of form. 
It may be only a dull, dry little seed which is 
held out to you, but in it is infolded a rare, 
sweet flower, which some day will fill your 
room with fragrance, if you accept it : you can- 
not have the flower then unless you take the 
seed to-day. 



CHAPTER XVII. 

THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 

u For she is kinder than all others are, 

And weak things, sad things, gather where she dwells, 
To reach and taste her strength, and drink of her, 
As thirsty creatures of clear water-wells." 

There are some people who seem to be spe- 
cially anointed to the office of comforter and 
consoler. The sorrowing and troubled are at- 
tracted to them as steel filings to a magnet, or 
as thirsty ones to a spring of water. The paths 
to their doors are worn by the passing feet of 
many weary ones. No office among men is 
more sacred, or fuller of blessing; for in no other 
field can wider opportunity be found for render- 
ing helpful service to humanity. It was to this 
service, in an eminent degree, that Christ was 
set apart. He said of himself, that the Spirit 
had sent him "to heal the broken-hearted." 
His whole ministry was one of consolation to 

181 



1 82 THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 

the sorrowing. The weary and the heartsore 
came to him with their burdens ; the penitent 
crept to his feet with their confessions ; mourn- 
ers sought his sympathy : and, wherever he 
went, he carried cheer, light, and inspiration. 
No one who came to him with a trouble went 
away uncomforted. His deep and ready sym- 
pathy and his gentle, uplifting help made him 
pre-eminently a consoler. 

Those who would follow in Christ's footsteps, 
and repeat in their human measure his ministry 
of love and beneficence in this world, must 
strive to be sons of consolation. There is 
always need for this sacred ministry. Wher- 
ever one may live, there is no other human 
experience that one is so sure of meeting as 
sorrow. In other respects men differ, — in 
race, in color, in worldly condition, in culture, 
in degrees of refinement, in customs and modes 
of life, — but in one respect all are alike : all 
have sorrow. There are many languages spoken 
on the earth, and the traveller ofttimes finds 
himself unable to understand the word that falls 
upon his ear ; but there is one language that he 



THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 183 

finds the same in all zones, in all conditions, — 
the language of grief. Everywhere there are 
tears telling of sadness. There is no circle in 
which there is not some heavy heart. We pass 
no day in which we do not meet with those who 
are oppressed with some open or secret grief. 
An old clergyman once said to a company of 
students he was addressing, that they ought 
never to conduct a religious service without 
some word of comfort for the troubled, for 
they would always have some troubled ones in 
their audience. Wherever we go, we come 
upon those who long for sympathy, and whose 
hearts are crying out for comfort. 

Therefore, those who have learned to comfort 
others have found a ministry of great useful- 
ness. It was the early prayer of Mrs. Prentiss, 
who has helped so many weary pilgrims heaven- 
ward, — 

" Oh that this heart, with grief so well acquainted, 
Might be a fountain, rich and sweet and full, 
For all the weary that have fallen and fainted 
In life's parched desert, — thirsty, sorrowful. 



1 84 THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 

Thou Man of sorrows, teach my lips, that often 

Have told the sacred story of my woe, 
To speak of thee till stony griefs I soften, — 

Till those that know thee not, learn thee to know." 

Her prayer was answered ; for of this gifted 
woman, after her death, it was said with great 
truthfulness, " Hers was in an eminent degree 
the blessing of them that were ready to per- 
ish. Weary, overtaxed mothers, misunderstood 
and unappreciated wives, servants, pale seam- 
stresses, delicate women forced to live in an 
atmosphere of drunkenness and coarse brutality, 
widows and orphans in the bitterness of their 
bereavement, mothers with their tears dropping 
over empty cradles, — to thousands of such she 
was a messenger from heaven." To receive 
such eulogium when one's work is finished, is 
better than to have died amid the richest splen- 
dors of wealth, or to have had the paeans of 
fame sung over one's grave. 

The anointing to the office of consoler is 
usually an anointing of tears. Only those who 
have learned in God's school of experience can 
be the best comforters of others. It was thus 



THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 185 

that Christ himself was prepared to be the great 
Comforter. It is because on earth he was tried 
in all points as we are, that now in heaven he 
is touched with the feeling of our infirmities. 
Even his divinity did not qualify him for sym- 
pathy : he must learn by actual human expe- 
rience what sorrow is, that he might- be the 
comforter of sorrow. It is in the same school 
that God ordinarily trains his children for this 
sacred office. He may not take them through 
bereavements (Christ did not suffer bereave- 
ments), but there are many other kinds of 
suffering in which hearts may be schooled. 
Some learn their lessons in early struggles with 
adversity, or with temptation, or with the weak- 
ness and sin of their own natures, or in disap- 
pointments, self-denials, and trials. Many who 
seem to common eyes to have escaped the sor- 
rows of life, have yet in many ways been trained 
and disciplined, and their hearts chastened and 
softened, and cleansed of the hardness and self- 
ishness of nature; so that they are well pre- 
pared to understand the experiences of others 
in struggle and sorrow, and give true and wise 



1 86 THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 

consolation. This is one of the rich compen- 
sations of trial : we get out of it, if we endure 
it Christianly, preparation for one of life's most 
sacred ministries. 

As to the manner in which this ministry of 
consolation may be performed, but few sugges- 
tions can be made. If the heart is ready for 
it, no rules will be needed. Genuine sympathy 
is the basis of all true and wise comfort. We 
must enter into the experiences of those to 
whom we would minister comfort ; we must 
understand their grief : this will make us rever- 
ent in the presence of their trouble. If we 
could read the secret history of those about us, 
who now ofttimes try our patience by their 
infelicities of temper and disposition, we should 
probably find in their lives sorrow and suffering 
enough to explain to us the infirmities which so 
mar their character. True sympathy draws us 
very close to the sufferer. It also gives us that 
thoughtfulness, and that delicacy of feeling and 
touch, which make us gentle in all our treat- 
ment of grief ; for no other ministry is refine- 
ment of spirit so essential as for that of dealing 



THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 187 

with pained or wounded hearts. A wrong touch, 
or a harsh word, or the quick flash of an eye, 
may do irreparable harm, only opening afresh, 
with new pain and torture, the wound it was 
meant to heal. Hence, there is deep signifi- 
cance in the prophet's portraiture of Christ's 
gentleness in dealing with crushed spirits : " A 
bruised reed shall he not break." He never 
caused needless pain to the bruised heart he 
meant to soothe. No touch of his was ever 
rude : no word of his was ever harsh. We 
need, in like manner, the most delicate gentle- 
ness for the offices of comfort. 

We need also victorious faith, as well as 
gentleness, to fit us for the ministry of con- 
solation. We cannot give what we have not 
ourselves to give. How can we communicate 
strong faith in God and in his Word, if our own 
hearts are full of doubts and misgivinsrs ? How 
can we kindle the lamps of hope and courage 
and joy in the heart where all is dark, if there 
be no lamps shining in our own breast ? A 
true comforter must know deep Christian joy, 
— the joy that springs up amid sorrows, like a 



1 88 THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 

sweet, fresh spring under the tides of the brack- 
ish sea. One woman wrote to another in deep 
grief, "The shadow of death will not always 
rest on your home : you will emerge from its 
obscurity into such a light as they who have 
never sorrowed cannot know. We never know, 
or begin to know, the great Heart that loves us 
best, till we throw ourselves upon it in the hour 
of our despair." This writer herself knew the 
joy which she foretold to her sister, now walk- 
ing in the deep shadow. One who had had 
sorrow, but had never gotten out into the sun- 
shine, could not have given such comfort. 
Bright, radiant, victorious faith is essential in 
one who would give real consolation. One who 
has not come as a conqueror through Christ 
out of affliction, but has been crushed, and 
still lies in the dust of defeat, cannot minister 
comfort to others. A vanquished soldier can- 
not inspire courage and hope in another who is 
going out to battle. We must be overcomers 
ourselves, if we would help others to overcome. 
We must be truly comforted of God, if we 
would comfort others. 



THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 1 89 

As to the quality of the comfort itself that 
is ministered, it should be more than pity. 
Mere pity alone leaves the heart weaker than 
before. Wise and true comfort must give 
something that shall prove strength and inspi- 
ration to the fainting spirit, and help it to rise 
again. It should be like the wine which angels 
of mercy pour into the lips of the wounded on 
the fields of battle to revive them. The design 
of comfort is not merely to help the sorrowing 
through their sorrow, but to help them to get 
from their sorrow the blessing it has for them, 
to take from God the message of love which the 
sorrow bears, and to come from the experience 
stronger, purer, more radiant, with more of 
Christ's image glowing in their face. 

Wise and really helpful comfort, while it is 
touched by the friend's sorrow, and shares the 
pain, yet strives to put hope and strength into 
the sad heart, that recognizing God's hand, 
and submitting to it, it may yet take the bene- 
diction which the dark-robed messenger brings. 
In no experience of life do most persons need 
wise friendship and firm guidance more than in 



190 THE OFFICE OF CONSOLER. 

their times of trouble. There are dangerous 
shoals skirting all the deeps of affliction, and 
many frail barks are wrecked in the darkness. 
It is the office of the one who would give good 
comfort, to pilot the sorrowing past the shoals 
to the safe and radiant shore. For this, a firm 
hand is needed as well as a tender heart. 



CHAPTER XVIII. 

LIVING BY THE DAY. 

" Time was, is past : thou canst not it recall. 
Time is, thou hast : employ the portion small. 
Time future, is not, and may never be. 
Time present is the only time for thee." 

It is life's largeness that most discourages 
earnest and conscientious souls. As men think 
deeply of its meaning and responsibility, they 
are apt to be overwhelmed by the thought of 
its vastness. It has manifold, almost infinite, 
relations toward God and toward man. Each 
of these relations has its binding duties. 
Every individual life must be lived amid count- 
less antagonisms, and in the face of countless 
perils. Battles must be fought, trials encoun- 
tered, and sorrows endured. Every life has a 
divine mission to fulfil, a plan of God to work 
out. Then the brief earthly course is but the 

beginning of an endless existence, whose im- 

191 



192 LIVING BY THE DAY. 

mortal destinies hinge upon fidelity in the 
present life. Looked at in this way, as a 
whole, there is something almost appalling in 
the thought of our responsibility in living. 

Many a person who thinks of life in this 
aspect, and sees it in its wholeness, has not the 
courage to hope for success and victory, but 
stands staggered, well-nigh paralyzed, on the 
threshold. " I cannot possibly meet all these 
responsibilities, and perform all these duties. 
I can but fail in the end if I try : why should 
I try at all, only to suffer the shame and pain 
of defeat ? " Despair comes to many a heart 
when either duty or sorrow or danger is looked 
at in the aggregate. 

But this is not the way we should view life. 
It does not come to us all in one piece. We 
do not get it even in years, but only in days, — 
day by day. We look on before us, and as 
we count up the long years with their duties, 
struggles, and trials, the bulk is like a moun- 
tain which no mortal can carry ; but we really 
never have more than one day's battles to fight, 
or one day's work to do, or one day's burdens 



LIVING BY THE DAY. 193 

to bear, or one day's sorrow to endure, in any 

one day. 

" I think not of to-morrow, 
Its trial or its task, 
But still with childlike spirit 

For present mercies ask. 
With each returning morning 

I cast old things away. 
Life's journey lies before me : 
My prayer is for to-day." 

It is wonderful how the Bible gives emphasis 
to this way of viewing life. When for forty 
years God fed his chosen people with bread 
from heaven, he never gave them, except on 
the morning before the sabbath, more than 
one day's portion at a time. He positively for- 
bade them gathering more than would suffice 
for the day, and if they should violate his 
command, what they gathered over the daily 
portion would become corrupt. Thus early 
God began to teach his people to live only by 
the day, and trust him for to-morrow. At the 
close of the forty years, the promise given to 
one of the tribes was, " As thy days, so shall 



194 LIVING BY THE DAY. 

thy strength be." Strength was not promised 
in advance, — enough for all life, or even for a 
year, or for a month, — but the promise was, 
that for each day, when it came with its 
own needs, duties, battles, and griefs, enough 
strength would be given. As the burden in- 
creased, more strength would be imparted. As 
the night grew darker, the lamps would shine 
out more brightly. The important thought 
here is, that strength is not emptied into our 
hearts in bulk, — a supply for years to come, — 
but is kept in reserve, and given day by day, 
just as the day's needs require. 

" Oh ! ask not thou, How shall I bear 

The burden of to-morrow ? 
Sufficient for to-day, its care, 

Its evil, and its sorrow; 
God imparteth by the way 

Strength sufficient for the day." 

When Christ came, he gave still further 
emphasis to the same method of living. He 
said, " Be not anxious for the morrow ; for the 
morrow will be anxious for itself. Sufficient 
unto the day is the evil thereof." He would 



LIVING BY THE DAY. 195 

have us fence off the days by themselves, and 
never look over the fence to think about to- 
morrow's cares. The thought is, that each 
day is, in a certain sense, a complete life by 
itself. It has its own duties, its own trials, 
its own burdens, and its own needs. It has 
enough to fill heart and hands for the one full 
day. We cannot live its life well, and use any 
of its strength outside of itself. The very 
best we can do for any day, for the perfecting 
of our life as a whole, is to live the one day 
well. We should put all our thought and 
energy and skill into the duty of each day, 
wasting no strength, either in grieving over 
yesterday's failures, or in anxiety about to-mor- 
row's responsibilities. 

" Bear the burden of the present, 
Let the morrow bear its own : 
If the morning sky be pleasant, 
Why the coming night bemoan ? 

Grief, nor pain, nor any sorrow, 
Rends thy heart to Him unknown : 

He to-day and He to-morrow 
Grace sufficient gives His own." 



196 LIVING BY THE DAY. 

Charles Kingsley says, "Do to-day's duty, 
fight to-day's temptation, and do not weaken 
and distract yourself by looking forward to 
things which you cannot see, and could not 
understand if you saw them." 

Our Lord, also, in the form of prayer which 
he gave his disciples, taught this lesson of liv- 
ing by the day. There he has told us to ask 
for bread for one day only. " Give us this day 
our daily bread." Here, again, he teaches us 
that we have to do only with the present day. 
We do not need to-morrow's bread now: when 
we need it, it will be soon enough to ask God 
for it, and get it. It is the manna lesson over 
again. God is caring for us, and we are to 
trust him for the supply of all our wants as 
they press upon us : we are to trust him, con- 
tent to have only enough in hand for the day. 

" Why should'st thou fill today with sorrow 
About to-morrow, 

My heart ? 
One watches all with care most true : 
Doubt not that He will give thee, too, 

Thy part " 



LIVING BY THE DAY. 197 

If we can but learn to live thus by the day, 
without anxiety about the future, the burden 
will not be so crushing. We have nothing to 
do with life in the aggregate, — that great bulk 
of duties, responsibilities, struggles, and trials 
that belong to a course of years. We really 
have nothing to do even with the nearest of the 
days before us, — to-morrow. Our sole busi- 
ness is with the one little day now passing. 
And its burdens will not crush us : we can 
easily carry them till the sun goes down. We 
can get along for one short day : it is the projec- 
tion of life into the long future that dismays 
and appals us. So the lesson makes life easy 
and simple. 

" One day at a time. Every heart that aches 
Knows only too well how long that can seem ; 
But it's never to-day which the spirit breaks, — 
It's the darkened future, without a gleam. 

One day at a time. A burden too great 
To be borne for two can be borne for one : 

Who knows what will enter to-morrow's gate ? 
While yet we are speaking, all may be done. 



198 LIVING BY THE DAY. 

One day at a time. But a single day, 
Whatever its load, whatever its length ; 

And there's a bit of precious Scripture to say, 
That according to each shall be our strength." 

But is there to be no forethought ? The best 
forethought for to-morrow is to-day's duty well 
done. It is so in school : one lesson well 
learned leads up to the next, and makes it 
easy ; and each day's lessons mastered through 
the years, give scholarship in the end. It is 
so in all life : if to-day is well lived, if all Its 
responsibilities are promptly and wisely met, 
to-morrow will come bright with new hopes. 
God gives guidance, also, by the day. One 
who carries a lantern at night does not see the 
whole path home ; the lantern lights only a 
single step in advance ; but, when that step is 

r 

taken, another is thereby lighted, and so on 
until the end of the journey is reached. It is 
thus that God lights our way. He does not 
show us the whole of it when we set out : he 
makes one step plain, and then, when we take 
that, another and then another. 



LIVING BY THE DAY. 199 

" If thou hast yesterday thy duty done, 

And thereby cleared firm footing for to-day, 
Whatever clouds may dark to-morrow's sun, 
Thou shalt not miss thy solitary way." 



CHAPTER XIX. 

HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

" Forenoon and afternoon and night ; — forenoon 

And afternoon and night ; — forenoon and — what ! 

The empty song repeats itself. No more ? 

Yea, that is life- : make this forenoon sublime, 

This afternoon a psalm, this night a prayer, 

And time is conquered, and thy crown is won." 

E. R. Sill. 

Some conscientious people are anxious be- 
cause their religious life has become such a 
matter of habit, that they are not conscious of 
any voluntary efforts to live right. They feel 
that their acts and services cannot be pleasing 
to God when rendered without any conscious 
desire to honor him. They are oppressed with 
the fear that their comfortable religion is really 
only formality. They pray at certain hours, 
and go to church at certain times, and they go 
through regular routines of duties, and they 
seem to be good and to do good by routine rather 

200 



HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 201 

than from the heart. The methodicalness of 
their piety frightens them when they think 
seriously about it : it seems to them, that, in 
all their acts of devotion and service, there 
should be a spontaneous feeling, ever fresh 
and sweet. 

A little reflection will show us that such anx- 
iety is groundless. All true greatness is un- 
conscious of itself. It is so of beauty. The 
sweetest feature in childhood is its uncon- 
sciousness. Whenever the little girl begins to 
be conscious that she is pretty, her beauty is 
greatly marred. The highest skill in any art 
is that which is not conscious of skill. Poets 
do their best work when they are conscious of 
no effort. They write, as it were, by natural 
inspiration, just as a bird sings. Artists reach 
their highest achievements when they are con- 
scious of making no great exertion. A musician 
brings the sweetest strains from his instrument 
when he is not conscious of trying to do any 
thing great. The highest attainment in any 
art is that in which the art is forgotten. The 
appearance of effort mars any performance. 



202 HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

All truly great things are done easily and un- 
consciously. 

The principle is just as true in its application 
to Christian life. When one is conscious of 
his spiritual graces, the beauty of these graces 
is marred. When a man knows that he is 
humble, his humility vanishes. When one has 
to make efforts to be generous, patient, or un- 
selfish, he has yet much to learn about these 
elements. The highest reach in Christian 
character brings the disciple back to the sim- 
plicity of a little child, when he is utterly 
unconscious of the splendor of his character in 
Heaven's sight. 

This is the culmination, but it takes many 
years ofttimes to attain to such completeness. 
Take piano-playing. You listen entranced to 
the skilful performer. His fingers fly over the 
keys, and wander over the chords, up and down 
the octaves, and the music thrills you. You 
are utterly amazed at the skill he exhibits : yet 
it seems no effort to him ; he does it all as 
easily as the bird sings its morning song in the 
grove. This is the ultimate of his art ; but it 



HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 203 

was not always so. Back of what you now see 
and hear, lie long, patient years of weary, toil- 
some learning, and tedious, exhausting prac- 
tice, when he had to pick out each separate 
note on the key-board, then pass to the next, 
and search for that. 

So you see a Christian who is very patient, 
or has great meekness. He is not easily pro- 
voked. When he is insulted, his face grows a 
little pale, but there is no outburst ; no anger 
clouds his brow ; no passionate word escapes 
his lips ; he rules his own spirit ; he speaks the 
soft answer, or is silent ; or, he has wondrous 
Christian joy. He has sorrows, but amid them 
all his heart rejoices. His life is a " song in 
the night," or he has attained rare, almost un- 
earthly, spirituality. He seems to have actual 
converse with heaven. A celestial brightness 
clings to him. He walks the earth as if he 
were a visitant from another world ; his daily 
life is a prayer, breathing out a silent, uncon- 
scious influence of heavenliness, as a sweet 
flower pours out fragrance on the common air ; 
or he lives a Christian life of superior noble- 



204 HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

ness. He displays the graces of the spirit in 
unusual measure. He manifests Christ's hid- 
den life wherever he goes. His^ life is one of 
great usefulness, as, with beautiful unselfish- 
ness, he ministers to the good of others. His 
heart is touched by every cry of distress, and 
his hand goes out to give relief to all suffering 
and need ; and all this costs no effort. It ap- 
pears easy and natural for him to be just such 
a Christian, and he seems unconscious of any 
pre-eminent attainments. 

Looking at such characters and lives, many 
feel discouraged. They say, " I can never be 
such a Christian ; " or perhaps they take an- 
other view of it, and say, " It costs these men 
or women nothing to be good Christians : it is 
easy and natural to them. They have to make 
no effort to be true, meek, gentle, unselfish, or 
good-tempered and sweet-spirited. If they had 
my quick, fiery nature, they could not be so ; if 
they were made of tinder, as I am, they would 
not be able so to rule their spirits under keen 
provocation ; if they had my strong feelings, 
they could not be joyful when sorrow sweeps 



HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 205 

over them ; if they had all my peculiarities of 
constitution, circumstance, and environment, 
all my trials and difficulties, they could not be 
such lovely, full-rounded Christians." 

No doubt, there is something in temperament 
and constitution, but there is far less than many 
of us claim. It is very convenient to have such 
a scapegoat on which to pile the responsibility 
for bad temper and execrable living, but the 
difference usually is in the culture of the life. 
It is just as in the case of the pianist. You 
see the matured character, the disciplined spirit, 
the trained life ; and you marvel at the ease, the 
perfectness, the unconsciousness, with which 
these beautiful things are done ; but you know 
nothing of the years that lie back of these 
results, in which there were exertions, efforts, 
struggles, and failures, amid which, a thousand 
times, hearts grew faint, and spirits sank almost 
in despair. What we admire and envy in the 
finely cultured character, is not the spontaneity 
of unschooled nature, but the result of years 
and years of patient and painful discipline, by 
which a disposition, perhaps coarse and rude 



206 HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

and impetuous, has been trained into refine- 
ment, gentleness, and calm peace. 

The tendency of all faithful and true living 
is toward the confirmation and solidifying of 
character. We grow always in the direction 
of our habits and efforts. He that continually 
struggles to be unselfish, will have many a con- 
flict and many a defeat ; but at length he will 
learn to exercise an unselfish spirit without any 
exertion. The wheels have run so long and so 
often in one track, that they have cut deep 
grooves for themselves, into which they fall 
as if by nature. Yet this does not take away 
from the moral character of the acts themselves. 
Indeed, it shows, that, instead of doing certain 
specific things in detail to please God, the whole 
life has become bent, trained, and solidified into 
conformity with right. It shows, that, instead 
of piecemeal obedience, holy principles have 
become wrought into the very fibre and quality 
of the soul. There may be less feeling, less 
emotion, less consciousness of trying to please 
God in the minute acts of life ; but the char- 
acter itself has taken on the stamp of holi- 



HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 207 

ness, and the natural motions of the soul have 
been trained into the grooves of righteousness. 
Yielding habitually to the monitions of the 
Spirit, the life has been transformed more and 
more into the image of Christ, until uncon- 
sciously, and without effort, the Christian does 
the things that please God. 

This is the ultimate of Christian culture. It 
has in the highest and truest sense become 
"second nature" to do right and beautiful 
things, and not even to stop to think of them 
as right and beautiful, or to weigh their moral 
character. Who does not know some quiet 
Christian life that makes no pretension to 
greatness, that is simple, humble, modest, re- 
tiring, and yet performs a blessed ministry, 
breathing fragrance and joy all about itself? 
The more we watch the seeds which grow and 
bring forth fruit in this world, the more shall 
we learn that they are oftenest those that are 
unconsciously dropped, when the sower knows 
not that his hand is scattering golden grains of 
life. When we try to do something great or 
fine, nothing comes of it. God seems to blight 



208 HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

the things we do with large intent : then, when 
we do some simple thing, without pretentious 
purpose, or any thought of excellence or fame, 
he makes the results immortal. Surely no one 
will say that these beautiful things possess no 
moral quality, because they are wrought uncon- 
sciously, or through force of long habit. 

A ripe Christian character is simply a life 
in which all Christian virtues and graces have 
become fixed and solidified into permanence as 
established habits. It costs no struggle to do 
right, because what has been done so long, 
under the influence of grace in the heart, has 
become part of the regenerated nature. The 
bird sings not to be heard, but because the 
song is in its heart, and must be expressed. It 
sings just as sweetly in the depths of the wood, 
with no ear to listen, as by the crowded thor- 
oughfare. Beethoven did not sing for fame, 
but to give utterance to the glorious music 
that filled his soul. The face of Moses did not 
shine to convince the people of his holiness, 
but because he had dwelt so long in the pres- 
ence of God that it could not but shine. Tru- 



HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 209 

est, ripest Christian life flows out of a full 
heart, — a heart so filled with Christ that it 
requires no effort to live well, and to scatter 
the sweetness of grace and love. 

It must be remembered, however, that all 
goodness in living begins first in obeying rules, 
in keeping commandments. Mozart and Men- 
delssohn began with running scales and strik- 
ing chords, and with painful finger-exercises. 
The noblest Christian began with the simplest 
obediences. The way to become skilful is to 
do things over and over, until we can do them 
perfectly, and without thought or effort. The 
way to become able to do great things, is to do 
our little things with endless repetition, and 
with increasing dexterity and carefulness. The 
way to grow into Christlikeness of character, 
is to watch ourselves in the minutest things of 
thought and word and act, until our powers are 
trained to go almost without watching in the 
lines of moral right and holy beauty. To 
become prayerful, we must learn to pray by the 
clock, at fixed times. It is fine ideal talk to 
say that our devotions should be like the bird's 



2IO HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

songs, warbling out anywhere, and at any time, 
with sweet unrestraint ; but in plain truth, to 
depend upon such impulses as guides to pray- 
ing, would soon lead to no praying at all. 
This may do for our heavenly life ; but we have 
not gotten into heaven yet, and until we do, we 
need to pray by habit. So of all religious life. 
We can only grow into patience by being as 
patient as we can, daily and hourly, and in 
smallest matters, ever learning to be more and 
more patient until we reach the highest possi- 
ble culture in that line. We can only become 
unselfish by practising unselfishness wherever 
we have an opportunity, until our life grows 
into the permanent beauty of unselfishness. 
We can only grow better by striving ever to be 
better than we already are, and by climbing 
step by step toward the radiant heights of ex- 
cellence. " We become better than we are by 
doing better than it is in our heart to do, better 
than it is yet our new nature to do. . . . The 
quickest way to outgrow rule, is to make faith- 
ful use of rule. The melted iron can dispense 
with the mould by having been run in the 



. HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 211 

mould. . The more pains we take to make the 
letters in our copy-book like those at the top 
of the page, the sooner we can get along with- 
out any copy-book. The element of the formal 
and the mechanical is the threshold over which 
we step forward to any new acquisition." 

" Slowly fashioned, link by link, 
Slowly waxing strong, 
'Till the spirit never shrink, 
Save from touch of wrong. 

Holy habits are thy wealth, 

Golden, pleasant chains, — 
Passing earth's prime blessing, health, — 

Endless, priceless gains. 

Holy habits are thy joy, 



Wisdom's pleasant ways, 
Yielding good without alloy, 
Lengthening, too, thy days." 

Thus our daily habits carry in them the buds 
and prophecies of our future character. The 
test of all moral life is in its tendencies. The 
question is not, What point have you attained ? 
but, Which way are you tending ? In what 



212 HABITS IN RELIGIOUS LIFE. 

direction is your growth ? Is your character 
compacting toward patience, gentleness, truth, 
love? or toward impatience, hardness, falsehood, 
and selfishness ? What is the trend of your 
spiritual habits ? We grow always in the direc- 
tion of our daily living. The powers we use 
develop continually into greater strength. The 
graces we cultivate come out more and more 
clearly in our character. A bird that would 
not use its wings would soon have no wings 
that it could use. Made to soar above the 
earth as our souls are, to fly toward God and 
heaven, if we only grovel in the dust, and do 
not use our wings, we lose power to soar, and 
our whole life grows toward earthliness. But 
if we train ourselves to look upward, to walk 
erect, to gather our soul's food from the 
branches of the tree of life, our whole being 
will grow toward spirituality and heavenliness. 



CHAPTER XX. 

THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 

" Words are mighty, words are living 
Serpents with their venomed stings, 
Or bright angels crowding round us, 
With heaven's light upon their wings ; 
Every word has its own spirit, 
True or false, that never dies ; 
Every word man's lips have uttered, 
Lives on record in the skies." 

" Death and life," says the wise man's prov- 
erb, " are in the power of the tongue." Words 
seem little things, so fleeting and evanescent, 
that apparently it cannot matter much of what 
sort they are. They are so easily spoken, that 
we forget what power they have to give pleas- 
ure or pain. They seem so swiftly gone after 
they have passed the door of our lips, and to 
have vanished so utterly, that we forget they 
do not really go away at all, but linger, either 
like barbed arrows in the heart where they 

21 3 



214 THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 

struck, or, like fragrant flowers, distilling per- 
fume. They seem to us, as we carelessly speak 
them, to be insignificant, and powerless for 
good or ill ; and we do not stop to think, that, 
as they fly, they either tear down or build up 
fair fabrics of joy and peace in the souls of 
those to whom we speak. There have been 
words quietly spoken, which have broken like 
the lightning-flash, bearing sad desolation on 
their blighting wings, which years could not 
repair. On the other hand, there have been 
simple words which, treasured in memory, have 
hung like bright stars of joy and cheer in long, 
dark nights of sorrow and trial. 

The tongue's power to do good is simply in- 
calculable. It can impart valuable knowledge ; 
it can speak words that will shine like lamps in 
darkened hearts ; it can pronounce kindly sen- 
tences that will comfort sorrow, or cheer de- 
spondency; it can breathe thoughts that will 
arouse, inspire, and quicken heedless souls, and 
even whisper the divine secret of life-giving 
energy to spirits that are dead. What good we 
could do with our tongues, if we would use 



THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 215 

them to the full limit of their power for good, 
no one can compute. And these opportunities 
do not lie alone in formal speech, as in the ser- 
mon or the lesson, or in the occasional serious 
talk, but they come in all conversation, even in 
the most casual greeting on the street. 

" A kindly word and a tender tone, — 
To only God is their virtue known ; 
They can lift from the dust the abject head, 
They can turn a foe to a friend instead ; 
The heart close-barred with passion and pride 
Will fling at their knock its portal wide ; 
And the hate that blights, and the scorn that sears, 
Will melt in the fountain of childlike tears. 
What ice-bound barriers have been broken, 

What rivers of love been stirred, 
By a word in kindness spoken, 
By only a gentle word." 

But are these fine possibilities of speech real- 
ized by most people ? Is the daily talk, even of 
fairly good men and women, a ministry of bless- 
ing and good to those on whose ears it falls ? 
What is the staple of conversation among aver- 
age Christians ? Let us listen for a day, and 



216 THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 

make careful note of all we hear. How much 
of it is worth recording ? How many sentences 
are spiritually helpful, calculated to kindle 
higher aspirations, or start upward impulses ? 
How much of it is utterly empty, mere chaff, 
that feeds no heart-hunger, kindles no joy, 
helps no one to live better ? How much is 
careless scandal, unjust and injurious criticism 
of the absent ? How much is hypocritical and 
insincere ? 

It is startling to think what Christian conver- 
sation might be, of what it ought to be, and 
then of what it is. Why should such a power 
for good be wasted, or far worse than wasted ? 
Why should our Christian development be re- 
tarded by the misuse of the marvellous gift of 
speech ? It were far better that one were born 
dumb than that, having a tongue, one should 
use it to scatter evil and sorrow, or to sow the 
seeds of bitterness and pain. Our Lord said 
we must give account of every idle word ; and, 
if for the idle words, how much more for the 
words that stain and injure, or fall as a de- 
structive blight into other hearts and lives ! 



THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 217 

When we give ourselves to Christ, we ought 
to give him our tongues : when we are regener- 
ated, our tongues ought to be regenerated. It 
was not without significance, that, when the 
Holy Ghost came down on the day of Pente- 
cost, the manifestation was in "tongues like as 
of fire." One of the first results, too, of this 
heavenly baptism was that the disciples spoke 
with other tongues. It is not a mere fanciful 
interpretation that sees in all this an intimation 
that true conversation transforms the speech, 
and that a Christian should speak with a new 
Christian tongue. 

There are many suggestions in the Scrip- 
tures as to the kind of words a Christian tongue 
should speak. For example : " Let no corrupt 
communication proceed out of your mouth, but 
that which is good' to the use of edifying, that 
it may minister grace unto the hearers." Two 
essential features of Christian speech are here 
touched upon. One is purity : no corrupt 
word should ever fall from a consecrated 
tongue, yet there is much impurity in the 
speech of some professing Christians. Filthy 



2l8 THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 

stories are told, and there are vile allusions 
and innuendoes which stain the lips that utter 
them and the heart of him who hears. Chris- 
tian conversation should be clean and white as 
snow. Nothing should be spoken in any com- 
pany which could not be spoken in the pres- 
ence of the most refined ladies. Will our 
every-day speech stand this test ? The other 
quality indicated in this quotation is edification 
and the imparting of grace. Purity is only 
negative, that which does not stain and soil ; 
but more is required. No sentence should be 
spoken which is not good for edifying, which 
does not minister grace. Every word should 
be fitted in some way to build up character, 
and add to its beauty. The geologist will take 
you to what was once the shore of an ancient 
sea, and show you the marks made by the pat- 
ter of the raindrops on the soft sand, or the 
lines left by the wash of the waves. A leaf 
fluttered down from a tree, and fell there, im- 
printing its delicate figure. Ages have passed 
since that time, but every trace remains as per- 
fect as when it was first made : the wash of the 



THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 219 

surf, the indentations made by the pattering 
raindrops, the minutest lines, the leafs skele- 
ton, — there they are, preserved through mil- 
lenniums of years. So it is that words fall 
upon a human heart. Our gentle poet's 
thought is no idle fancy that the song he 
sings, he will find again long, long afterward, 
in the heart of his friend. Words uttered, fall 
and are forgotten as their echoes die away, but 
they leave their mark : they either beautify or 
mar ; they either make the life brighter, or they 
sully it ; they either build up, or they tear 
down what before was builded. A warm breath 
upon the mystic frost-work on the window-pane 
on a winter's morning causes all the splendor 
to vanish. So, before the breath of impure 
words, the soul's glory melts into ruin. The 
Christian's speech should always edify, and give 
grace ; yet on how many lips, now garrulous 
with flippant words, would this test lay the 
finger of silence ! 

This does not imply that only grave and 
solemn words may be spoken. There is noth- 
ing gloomy about the religion of Christ. You 



220 THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 

look in vain through our Lord's own conversa- 
tion for one gloomy sentence: he scattered only 
sunshine. But all his words were fitted to be 
helpful words. He sought to leave some gift 
or blessing with every one he met. He spoke 
words that made the careless thoughtful, that 
kindled hope in despairing souls, that left lights 
burning where all was dark before, that com- 
forted the sorrowing, and cheered the despair- 
ing. For every one he met, he had some 
message ; yet there was no cant in his speech. 
He did not go about with a sad face, uttering 
his messages in sanctimonious tone and phrase: 
his speech, like all his life, was sunny. 

He is to be our model. The affectation of 
devoutness never ministers grace : it only cari- 
catures religion. We are not to fill our speech 
with solemn phrases, and deal them out to 
every one we meet. Yet with Christ in our 
hearts, we are to seek to impart something of 
Christ to every one with whom we converse. 
There are a thousand ways of giving help. 
There are times when humor ministers grace, 
when the truest Christian help for a man is to 



THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 221 

make him laugh. Infinite are the necessities 
of human lives. Our feeling toward others is 
ever to be a strong desire to do them good. 
We have an errand to each one with whom we 
are permitted to hold even the briefest and 
most casual conversation. What it is, we may 
not know ; but, if the desire be in our heart, 
God will use us to minister blessing in some 
way. Opportunities for such ministry are 
occurring continually. In a morning's greet- 
ing, we may put so much heart and so much 
Christ into phrase and tone as to make our 
neighbor happier all the day. In the few 
moments' conversation by the wayside, or dur- 
ing the formal call, or in the midst of the 
day's heat and strife, we may drop the word 
that will lift a burden, or strengthen a faint- 
ing heart, or inspire a new hope, or give warn- 
ing of danger. We should certainly not be 
always flippant, talking only of trifles. There 
are some who never say a serious or thought- 
ful word. We may never see our friend again, 
and any passing conversation with him may 
be the last that we shall ever have. We should 



222 THE POWER OF THE TONGUE. 

not fail, then, even in our briefest and idlest 
talk, to let fall at least one inspiring and help- 
ful sentence, which may prove a blessing to 
the one who listens to us. 

" Only one little word, 
But it stirred the depths of a living heart ; 
And there through the years and the changes of life, 
With its blessing and glory, its darkness and strife, 
The soul of that little word shall abide, 
And nevermore depart." 

So we may leave blessings at every step of 
our way. Our words in season, throbbing with 
love, and wafted by the breath of silent prayer, 
shall be medicine to every heart into which any 
simplest sentence of our speech may fall. 



CHAPTER XXL 

THE HOME CONVERSATION. 

" The angry word suppressed, the taunting thought, 

Subduing and subdued, the petty strife 

Which clouds the color of domestic life ; 

The sober comfort, all the peace which springs 

From the large aggregate of little things, — 

On these small cares of daughter, wife, or friend, 

The almost sacred joys of home depend." 

Hannah More. 

Few things are more important in a home 
than its conversation, yet there are few things 
to which less deliberate thought is given. We 
take great pains to have our house well fur- 
nished. We select our carpets and pictures 
with the utmost care. We send our children to 
school that they may become intelligent. We 
strive to bring into our homes the best con- 
ditions of happiness. But how often is the 
speech of the household left untrained and 

undisciplined ? 

223 



224 THE HOME CONVERSATION. 

The good we might do in our homes with 
our tongues, if we would use them to the limit 
of their capacity of cheer and helpfulness, it is 
simply impossible to state. That in most homes 
the best possible results from the gift of speech 
are not attained, is very evident. Why should 
so much power for blessing be wasted ? Espe- 
cially why should we ever pervert these gifts, 
and use our tongues to do evil, to give pain, to 
scatter seeds of bitterness ? It is a sad thing 
when a child is born dumb ; but it were better 
far to be born dumb, and never to have the 
gift of speech, than, having that gift, to employ 
it in speaking only sharp, unloving, or angry 
words. 

While in all places and at all times our 
words shall be well chosen, and should be full 
of the pure and gentle spirit of Christ, there 
are many reasons why the home conversation, 
pre-eminently, should be loving. Home is the 
place for warmth and tenderness : it should be 
made the brightest and sweetest spot on earth 
to those who dwell within its walls. We should 
all carry there our very best moods, tempers, 



THE HOME CONVERSATION. 22$ 

and dispositions. Especially by our speech 
should we seek to contribute to the enrichment 
of the home life, helping to make it elevating 
and refining, and in every way ennobling in its 
influence. Home should inspire every tongue 
to speak its most loving words, yet there is in 
many families a great dearth of kind speech. 
In some cases, there is no conversation at all 
worthy of the name ; there are no affectionate 
greetings in the morning, or hearty good-nights 
at parting when the evening closes ; the meals 
are eaten in silence ; there are no bright fire- 
side chats over the events and incidents of the 
day. A stranger might mistake the home for a 
deaf-and-dumb institution, or for a hotel where 
strangers were together only for a passing sea- 
son. In other cases it were even better if 
silence did reign, for there are words of miser- 
able strife and shameful quarrelling heard from 
day to day ; husband and wife, who vowed at 
the marriage-altar to cherish the one the other 
until death, keep up an incessant petty strife 
of words ; parents, who are commanded in the 
Holy Word not to provoke their children to 



226 THE HOME CONVERSATION. 

wrath, lest they be discouraged, but to bring 
them up in the nurture of the Lord, scarcely 
ever speak to them gently and in tenderness. 
They seem to imagine that they are not govern- 
ing their children, unless they are perpetually 
scolding them. They fly into a passion against 
them at the smallest irritation. They issue 
their commands to them in words and tones 
which would better suit the despot of a petty 
savage tribe than the head of a Christian house- 
hold. It is not strange, that, under such "nur- 
ture," the children, instead of dwelling together 
in unity, with loving speech, only wrangle and 
quarrel, speaking only bitter words in their 
intercourse with one another. That there are 
many homes of just this type, it is idle to deny. 
That prayer is offered morning and evening in 
some of these families, only makes the truth 
the sadder ; for it is mockery for the members 
of a household to rise together from their knees 
after morning devotion, only to begin another 
day of strife and bitterness. 

Nothing in the home life needs to be more 
carefully watched and more diligently cultivated 



THE HOME CONVERSATION. 227 

than the conversation : it should be imbued 
with the spirit of love. No bitter word should 
ever be spoken. 

" The ill-timed truth we might have kept, — 

Who knows how sharp it pierced and stung? 
The word we had not sense to say, — 
Who knows how grandly it had rung? " 

The talk of husband and wife, in their inter- 
course together, should always be tender. An- 
ger in word, or even in tone, should never be 
suffered; chiding and fault-finding should never 
be permitted to mar the sacredness of their 
speech ; the warmth and tenderness of their 
hearts should flow out in every word that they 
utter the one to the other ; as parents, too, in 
their intercourse with their children, they should 
never speak, save in words of Christ-like gentle- 
ness. It is a fatal mistake to suppose that 
children's lives can grow up into beauty in an 
atmosphere of strife. Harsh, angry words are 
to their sensitive souls what frosts are to the 
delicate flowers. To bring them up in the nur- 
ture of the Lord, is to bring them up as Christ 



228 THE HOME CONVERSATION. 

himself would do ; and surely that would be with 
infinite tenderness. The blessed influence of 
loving speech, day after day and month after 
month, it is impossible to estimate : it is like 
the falling of warm spring sunshine and rain 
on the garden. Beauty and sweetness of char- 
acter are likely to come from such a home. 

But home conversation needs more than love 
to give it its best influence : it ought to be 
enriched by thought. The Saviour's warning 
against idle words should be remembered. 
Every wise-hearted parent will seek to train his 
household to converse on subjects that will yield 
instruction, or tend toward refinement. The 
table affords an excellent opportunity for this 
kind of education. Three times each day the 
family gathers there : it is a place for cheerful- 
ness. Simply on hygienic grounds, meals should 
not be eaten in silence. Bright, cheerful con- 
versation is an excellent sauce, and a prime aid 
to digestion. If it prolongs the meal, and thus 
appears to take too much time out of the busy 
day, it will, in the end, add to the years by 
increased healthfulness and lengthened life. In 



THE HOME CONVERSATION. 229 

any case, however, something is due to refine- 
ment, and still more is due to the culture of 
one's home life. The table should be made the 
centre of the social life of the household. There, 
all should appear at their best and brightest : 
gloom should be banished. The conversation 
should be sprightly and sparkling : it should con- 
sist of something besides dull and threadbare 
commonplaces. The idle gossip of the street is 
not a worthy theme for such hallowed moments. 
The conversation of the table should be of a 
kind to interest all the members of the family ; 
hence it should vary to suit the age and intel- 
ligence of those who form the circle. The 
events and occurrences of each day may with 
profit be spoken of and discussed ; and now 
that the daily newspaper contains so full and 
faithful a summary of the world's doings and 
happenings, this is easy. Each one may men- 
tion the event which has specially impressed 
him in reading or in discussion without. Bits 
of refined humor should always be welcome, 
and all wearisome recital and dull, uninterest- 
ing discussion should be avoided. 



230 THE HOME CONVERSATION. 

Table-talk may be enriched, and at the same 
time the intelligence of all the members of the 
family may be advanced, by bringing out at 
least one new fact at each meal, to be added 
to the common fund of knowledge. Suppose 
there are two or three children at the table, 
varying in their ages from five to twelve. Let 
the father or the mother have some particular 
subject to introduce during the meal, which 
will be both interesting and profitable to the 
younger members of the family. It may be 
some historical incident, or some scientific fact, 
or an event in the life of some distinguished 
man. The subject should not be above the 
capacity of the younger people, for whose spe- 
cial benefit it is introduced, nor should the 
conversation be overweighted by attempting 
too much at one time. One single fact clearly 
presented, and firmly impressed so as to be re- 
membered, is better than whole chapters of 
information poured out in a confused jargon on 
minds that to-morrow cannot recall any part of 
it. A little thought will show the rich possible 
outcome of a system like this, if faithfully fol- 



THE HOME CONVERSATION. 231 

lowed through a series of years. If but one 

fact is presented at every meal, there will be 
a thousand things taught to the children in a 
year. If the subjects are wisely chosen, the 
fund of knowledge communicated in this way 
will be of no inconsiderable value. A whole 
system of education lies in this suggestion ; for, 
besides the communication of important knowl- 
edge, the habit of mental activity is stimulated, 
interest is awakened in lines of study and re- 
search which may afterwards be followed out, 
tastes are improved, while the effect upon the 
family life is elevating and refining. 

It may be objected that such a system of 
table-talk could not be conducted without much 
thought, study, and preparation on the part of 
parents ; but if the habit once were formed, 
and the plan properly introduced, it would be 
found comparatively easy for parents of ordi- 
nary intelligence to maintain it. Books are 
now prepared in great numbers, giving impor- 
tant facts in small compass. Then, there are 
encyclopaedias and dictionaries of various kinds. 
The newspapers contain every week paragraphs 



232 THE HOME CONVERSATION. 

and articles of great value in such a course. 
A wise use of scissors and paste will keep 
scrap-books well filled with materials which can 
readily be made available. It will be necessary 
to think and plan for such a system, to choose 
the topics in advance, and to become familiar 
with the facts. This work might be shared 
by both parents, and thus be easy for both. 
That it will cost time and thought and labor 
ought not to be an objection, for is it not 
worth almost any cost to secure the benefits 
and advantages which would result from such a 
system of home instruction ? 

These are hints only of the almost infinite 
possibilities of good which lie in the home con- 
versation. That so little is realized in most 
cases when so much is possible, is one of the 
saddest things about our current life. It may 
be that these suggestions shall stimulate in 
some families, at least, an earnest search after 
something better than they have yet found in 
their desultory and aimless conversational hab- 
its. Surely there should be no home in which, 
amid all the light talk that flies from busy 



THE HOME CONVERSATION. 233 

tongues, time is not found every day in which 
to say at least one word that shall be instruc- 
tive, suggestive, elevating, or at least, in some 
way, helpful. 



CHAPTER XXII. 

AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 

It is the picture of a mother of the olden 
times that is before us. The story of Hannah 
is invested with rare interest. It is one of 
those narratives whose charm is their un- 
adorned simplicity. Though living so long 
since, when the world was so young, this 
mother stands yet, in the radiant spirit of her 
life, in the clearness of her faith, in the devo- 
tion of her motherhood, as a model for Chris- 
tian mothers in these newest ages. There are 
some things that grow old and out of date, but 
motherhood does not : it is ever the same in 
its duties, its responsibilities, its sacred privi- 
leges, and its possibilities of influence. The 
old picture is new and fresh, therefore, in every 
age, to every true-hearted mother who looks 
upon it. 

For one thing, Hannah, as a mother, was 
• 234 



AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 235 

enthusiastic. She was not one of those women 
who think children undesirable encumbrances. 
She did not consider herself, in her earlier mar- 
ried years, particularly fortunate in being free 
from the cares and responsibilities of mother- 
hood. She believed that children were bless- 
ings from the Lord, that motherhood was the 
highest honor possible to a woman ; and she 
sought, reverently and very earnestly, from 
God, the privilege of pressing a little child to 
her bosom, and calling it her own. This line 
in the ancient picture we must not overlook in 
these days, when children are not always re- 
garded as blessings from the Lord, nor even 
always welcomed. 

For another thing, when Hannah's child 
came, she considered it a part of her religious 
duty to take care of it. Instead, therefore, of 
going up to Shiloh to attend all the great 
feasts, as she had done before, she staid at 
home for some time, to give personal attention 
to the little one that God had given her, and 
that was still too young to be taken with safety 
and comfort on such long journeys. No doubt 



236 AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 

she supposed that she was worshipping God 
just as acceptably in doing this as if she had 
gone up to all the great meetings. And who 
will say that she was not right? A mother's 
first obligations are to her children : she can 
have no holier or more sacred duties than those 
which relate to them. No amount of public 
religious service will atone for neglect of these. 
She may run to temperance and missionary 
meetings, and abound in all kinds of charitable 
activities, and may do very much good among 
the poor, carrying blessings to many other 
homes, and being a blessing to other people's 
children, through the Sunday school or mission 
school ; but if she fails, meanwhile, to care for 
her own children, she can scarcely be com- 
mended as a faithful Christian mother. She 
has overlooked her first and most sacred duties, 
while she gives her hand and heart to those 
that are but secondary to her. Hannah's way 
evidently was the true one. A mother had 
better be missed in the church, and at the pub- 
lic meetings, than be missed in her own house- 
hold. Some things must be crowded out of 



AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 237 

every earnest life, but the last thing to be 
crowded out of a mother's life should be the 
faithful and loving care of her children. The 
preacher may urge that every one should do 
something in the general work of the church, 
and the superintendent may appeal for teachers 
for the Sunday school ; but the mother herself 
must decide whether the Master wants her to 
take up any religious work outside her own 
home. For the work there she surely is re- 
sponsible ; for that outside she is not respon- 
sible until the other is well done, and she has 
time and strength for new duties. 

Another thing about Hannah was, that she 
looked after her own baby. She did the nurs- 
ing herself. She did not go to an intelligence 
office, and hire a foreign woman at so much a 
week, and then commit her tender child to her 
care, that she herself might have a " free foot " 
for parties and calls and operas, and social and 
religious duties. She was old-fashioned enough 
to prefer to nurse her own child. She does 
not seem to have felt it any great personal 
deprivation to be kept at home rather closely 



238 AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 

for a year or two on that account : she even 
appears to have thought it a high honor, and a 
distinguished privilege, to be a mother, and to 
do with her own hands a mother's duties. 
And when we think what this child that she 
nursed became in after-years, what the outcome 
was of all her pains, self-denials, and toils, it 
certainly looks as if Hannah was right. It is 
not likely she ever regretted, when she saw her 
son in the prime and splendor of his power 
and usefulness, that she had missed a few par- 
ties and other social privileges in nursing and 
caring for him in his tender infancy. If any 
thing even half so good comes ordinarily out 
of faithful mothering, there are certainly few 
occupations open to women, even in these ad- 
vanced nineteenth-century days, which will 
yield such satisfactory results in the end as the 
wise and true bringing up of children. Many 
women are sighing for distinction in the pro- 
fessions, or as authors, or artists, or singers ; 
but, after all, is there any distinction so noble, 
so honorable, so worthy, and so enduring as 
that which a true mother wins when she has 



AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 239 

brought up a son who takes his place in the 
ranks of good and true men ? Could Mary, 
the mother of Jesus, have found any mission, in 
any century, greater than that of nursing and 
caring for the holy Child that was laid in her 
arms ? Or, if that example be too high, could 
the mothers of Moses, of Samuel, of Augus- 
tine, of Washington, have done more for the 
world if they had devoted themselves to art, 
or poetry, or music, or a profession ? 

Perhaps Hannah was right ; and, if so, the 
old-fashioned motherhood is better than the 
new, and the mother herself is her own child's 
best nurse. A hired woman may be very skil- 
ful ; but surely she cannot be the best one to 
mould the soul of the child, and waken and 
draw out its powers and affections. The moth- 
er may, by employing such a substitute, be left 
free to pursue the fashionable round of dining 
and dressing, of amusement and social engage- 
ments ; but what is coming meanwhile of the 
tender, immortal life at home in the nursery, 
thus left practically motherless, to be nurtured 
and trained by a hireling stranger ? And what 



240 AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 

comes besides of the holy mission of mother- 
hood, which the birth of every child lays upon 
her who gave it life ? A recent writer, refer- 
ring to this subject, asks, "Is there any mal- 
feasance of office in these days of dishonor like 
unto this ? Our women crowd the churches, to 
draw the inspiration of religion for their daily 
duties, and then prove recreant to the first of 
all fidelities, the most solemn of all responsi- 
bilities. We hear fashionable young mothers 
boast that they are not tied down to their 
nurseries, but are free to keep in the old gay 
life, as though there were no shame to the soul 
of womanhood therein." Such a boast is one 
of the saddest confessions a mother could make. 
The great want of this age is mothers who will 
live with their own children, and throw over 
their tender lives all the mighty power of their 
own rich, warm, loving natures. If we can 
have a generation of Hannahs, we shall then 
have a generation of Samuels growing up under 
their wise, devoted nurture. 

There is one other feature in this old-time 
mother that should not be overlooked. She 



AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT. 241 

* 

nursed her child for the Lord. From the very 
first she looked upon him as God's child, not 
hers, and considered herself as only God's 
nurse, whose duty it was to bring up the child 
for a holy life and service. It is easy to see 
what a dignity and splendor this gave to the 
whole toilsome round of motherly tasks and 
duties which the successive days brought to her 
hand. This was God's child that she was 
nursing, and she was bringing him up for the 
Lord's service in two worlds. Nothing ever 
seemed drudgery : no duty to her little one was 
hard or distasteful, with this thought ever glow- 
ing in her heart. Need any woman have loftier 
or more powerful inspiration for toil and self- 
forgetfulness than this ? 

And is there any mother who may not have 
the same inspiration as she goes through her 
round of commonplace nursery tasks ? Was 
Samuel God's child in any higher sense when 
Hannah was nursing him than are the little 
ones that lie in the arms of thousands of 
mothers to-day ? In every mother's ears, when 
a baby is laid in her bosom, there is spoken by 



242 AN OLD BIBLE PORTRAIT, 

the breath of the Lord the holy whisper, if she 
but have ears to hear the divine voice, " Take 
this child, and nurse it for vie." All children 
belong to God, and he wants them brought up 
for pure and noble lives, and for holy missions. 
Every mother is, by the very lot of motherhood 
when it falls upon her, consecrated to the sa- 
cred service of nursing, moulding, and training 
an infant life for God. Hannah understood 
this, and found her task full of glory. But how 
many, even among Christian mothers, fail to 
understand it, and, unsustained by a conscious- 
ness of the dignity and blessedness of their 
high calling, look upon its duties and self- 
denials as painful tasks, a round of toilsome, 
wearisome drudgery ? 

It will be well worth while for every mother 
to sit down quietly beside Hannah, and try to 
learn her secret. It will change the humblest 
nursery into a holy sanctuary, and transform 
the commonest, lowliest duties of motherhood 
into services as splendid as those the radiant 
angels perform before the Father's face. 



CHAPTER XXIII. 

SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 

" Men die, but sorrow never dies : 

The corroding years divide in vain, 

And the wide world is knit with ties 

Of common brotherhood in pain." 

Susan Coolidge. 

Sooner or later, sorrow comes to every home. 
No conditions of wealth or culture or social 
standing, or even of religion, can exclude it. 
When two young people come from the mar- 
riage-altar, and set up their new home, it seems 
to them that its joy never can be disturbed, 
that grief can never reach their hearts in that 
charmed spot. For a few years, perhaps, their 
fond dream remains unbroken. The flowers 
bloom into still softer beauty and richer fra- 
grance ; the music continues light and joyous, 
with no minor chords ; the circle is unbroken ; 
child-lives grow up in the tender atmosphere, 
blessing the home with their love and lovable- 

243 



244 SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 

ness ; the household life flows on softly and 
smoothly, like a river, gathering in breadth and 
depth as it flows. In other homes, all about, 
there are sorrows, — bereavements, or griefs 
that are sorer than bereavements, — but amid 
these desolations of the dreams of other house- 
holds, this one remains untouched, like an oasis 
in the desert ; but not forever does the exemp- 
tion continue. There comes a day when the 
strange messenger of sorrow stands at the door, 
nor waits for bidding and welcome, but enters, 
and lays his withering hand on some sweet 
flower. 

The first experience of grief is very sore : its 
suddenness and strangeness add to its terrible- 
ness. What seemed so impossible yesterday, 
has become a fearful reality to-day. The dear 
one whom we held so securely, as we thought 
that we never could lose her, is gone now, and 
answers no more to our call. It seems to us 
that we never can be comforted, that we never 
can enjoy life again, since the one who made 
for us so much of the gladness of life has been 
taken away. The time of the first sorrow is to 



SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 245 

every life a most critical point, a time of great 
danger. The way is new and untried, one over 
which the feet have never passed before. At 
no other point, therefore, is wise and loving 
guidance more needed. Many lives are wrecked 
on the hidden reefs and the low, dangerous 
rocks that skirt the shores of sorrow's sea. 
Many persons find in grief an enemy only, to 
whom they refuse to be reconciled, and with 
whom they contend in fierce strife, receiving 
only injury and harm to themselves in the 
unavailing conflict. 

An impression prevails, that sorrow is in it- 
self a blessing in its influence, that it always 
makes purer and holier and better the lives that 
it touches ; but this is not true. Sorrow has in 
itself no cleansing efficacy, as some suppose, 
by which it removes from sinful lives their 
blemishes and stains. The same fire which 
refines the gold destroys the flowers. Sorrow 
is a fire, which in God's hand is designed to 
purify the lives of his people, but which, un- 
blessed, produces only desolation. It depends 
on the relation of the sufferer to Christ, as 



246 SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 

friend or enemy, and on the reception given to 
grief, whether it leave good or ill where it 
enters ; but in a Christian home, where the love 
of Christ dwells and holds sway, sorrow should 
always leave a benediction. It should be re- 
ceived as God's own messenger ; and we should 
welcome it, and listen for the divine message 
it bears. 

For God's angels do not always come to us, 
as we are apt to imagine them coming, in radi- 
ant dress, with smiling face and gentle voice. 
Thus artists paint them in their pictures. Thus 
we fancy them in their ministries. We think 
of them as possessing rare and wondrous love- 
liness ; and so, no doubt, they do as they appear 
before God, and serve in his presence. There 
is no unloveliness in any angel-face in heaven. 
No angel has features of sternness ; but, as 
these celestial messengers come to earth on 
their ministries, they appear ofttimes in forms 
that appal, and fill the trembling heart with 
terror and alarm. Yet ofttimes it is when they 
come in these very forms that they bring their 
sweetest messages and their best blessings. 



SORROW IN CHRIST! AX HOMES. 247 

'•All God's angels come to us disguised, — 
Sorrow and sickness, poverty and death, 
One after other lift their frowning masks, 
And we behold the seraph's face beneath, 
All radiant with the glory and the calm 
Of having looked upon the face of God." 

Wherever God's messenger of sorrow is thus 
received in a Christian home, with welcome 
even amid tears and pain, it will leave a bless- 
ing of peace, and will make the home sweeter, 
tenderer, heavenlier. We speak of love as the 
atmosphere in which the home reaches its best 
development in the direction of happiness, as 
in summer warmth the flowers unfold their 
rarest beauty and sweetest fragrance ; but 
really no home ever attains its highest blessed- 
ness and joy, and its fullest richness of life, 
until in some way sorrow enters its door. Even 
the home love, like certain autumn fruits, does 
not ripen into its sweetest tenderness until the 
frosts of trial have touched it. When a green 
log of wood is laid on the andirons, on a winter 
evening, and the fire begins to play about the 
log, a weird, plaintive music comes from the 



248 SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 

wood. A poet would tell you, that, while 
the tree stood in the forest, the birds sat amid 
its branches, and sang there, and that the 
notes of their songs hid away in the tree. 
Then he would tell you that the music you 
now hear from the log as it burns, is this bird- 
minstrelsy, which has remained imprisoned in 
the wood until brought out by the hot flames. 
The poet's thought is only a fancy, but it 
well illustrates a truth concerning the life of a 
Christian home, which is worth pondering and 
remembering. In the sunny days of joy, the 
bird-notes of gladness are sung all about us, 
and sink away into our hearts, and hide there. 
The lessons, the influences, the tender impres- 
sions, the peace, and the beautiful things of 
quiet, happy, prosperous years, fall upon our 
lives, as the sunbeams and rain-showers fall 
upon the fields all the long autumn and winter 
and early spring, and seem to be lost. There 
appears but little to show for so much absorp- 
tion of brightness and blessing. Our lives do 
not appear to yield the measure of joy they 
should yield. Then the flames of trial are kin- 



SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 249 

died ; and, in the heat of suffering, the long- 
gathering and long-slumbering music is set free, 
and flows out. 

Many of the world's best things have been 
born of affliction. The sweetest sonsrs ever 
sung on earth have been called out by suffering. 
The richest blessings that we enjoy have come 
to us out of the fire. The good things we in- 
herit from the past are the purchase of suffer- 
ing and sacrifice. Our redemption comes from 
Gethsemane and Calvary. We get heaven 
through Christ's tears and blood. Whatever 
is richest and most valuable in life anywhere 
has been in the fire. Our love for one another 
may be strong and true in the sunny days, but 
it never reaches its holiest and fullest expres- 
sion until pain has touched our hearts, and 
called out the hidden treasures of affliction. 
Even the love of a mother for her child, deep 
and pure as it is, never reaches its full won- 
drousness of devotion and sacrifice until the 
child suffers, and the mother bends over it in 
yearning and solicitude. . The same is true of 
all the home loves : the best and divinest quali- 



250 SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 

ties in them come out only in the fires. The 
household that has endured sorrow in the true 
spirit of love and faith, emerges from it unde- 
stroyed, untarnished, with purer, tenderer affec- 
tions, with less of passion, of selfishness, and 
of earthliness. When husband and wife stand 
together beside their dead child, they are drawn 
to each other as never before : their common 
grief is sacramental. Children that remain are 
dearer to parents after one has been taken. 
Brothers and sisters grow more thoughtful and 
patient in their mutual intercourse when the 
home circle has been broken. There is in an 
empty chair in a Christian home a wondrous 
power to soften the asperities of nature, and re- 
fine all the affections and feelings. The cloud 
of grief that hangs over a household, like the 
summer cloud above the fields and gardens, 
leaves blessings. 

" Is it raining, little flower ? 
Be glad of rain. 
Too much sun would wither thee. 

'Twill shine again. 
The sky is very black, 'tis-true, 
But just behind it shines the blue. 



SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 25 I 

Art thou weary, tender heart? 

Be glad of pain ; 
In sorrow sweetest things will grow 

As flowers inrain. 
God watches, and thou wilt have sun 
When clouds their perfect work have done." 

But how may we make sure of the benedic- 
tions that sorrow brings ? Even the gospel is 
the savor of death to those who reject it ; and 
sorrow, though it be God's evangel, ofttimes 
comes and goes away again, leaving no heavenly 
gift. How must we treat this dark-robed mes- 
senger, if we would receive the heavenly bless- 
ings it bears in its hands? We must welcome it, 
even in our trembling and tears, as sent from 
God. We must believe that it comes from our 
Father, and that, coming from him, it is a mes- 
senger of love to us, bearing a true blessing for 
us, though it be a loss or a pain. We must ask 
for the message which God has sent us in the 
affliction, and listen to it as we would to a mes- 
sage of gladness. It has some mission to us, 
or some gift from heaven. Some golden fruit 
lies hidden in the rough husk. Some bit of 



252 SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 

gold in us God designs to be set free from its 
dross by this fire. There is some radiant height 
beyond this dark valley, to which he wants to 
lead us. Christ himself accepted and endured 
with loving submission the bitter sorrow of his 
cross, because he saw the joy set before him 
and waiting beyond the sorrow. In the same 
way, we should accept our griefs, because they 
are but the shaded gateways to peace and 
blessedness. If we cannot get through the 
gateways, we cannot get the radiant joys that 
wait beyond. Not to be able to take from our 
Father's hand the seed of pain, is to miss the 
fruits of blessing which can grow from no other 
sowing. If we are wise, we will give sorrow as 
cordial a welcome as joy ; for it is from the same 
loving hand, and brings gifts as good and golden. 
We must remember, that it is in the home 
where Christ himself dwells, that sorrow un- 
locks its heavenly treasures. A Christless 
home receives none of them. Those who shut 
their doors on Christ, shut out all blessedness, 
and, when the lamps of earthly joy go out, are 
left in utter darkness. A wise forethought 



SORROW IN CHRISTIAN HOMES. 253 

will make sure of the hopes and comforts of a 
personal interest in Christ, and of having him 
as guest in the sunny days, that, when the 
shadow of night falls, the stars of bright hope 
may shine out. 



CHAPTER XXIV. 

DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

It takes courage to look our own sins in the 
face, and to deal with them as we would coun- 
sel another to do, if the sins were his. It was 
one of the old psalm-writers who said, " I 
thought on my ways." It is not likely that 
even he found it an easy thing to do. It is 
usually very much harder to think on our own 
ways than on other people's : most of us do 
quite enough of the latter. We keep a mag- 
nifying-glass to inspect our neighbor's life, a 
high-power microscope to hunt for specks in 
his character ; but too often w r e forget to use 
our glasses on ourselves, or, if we do, we re- 
verse them, and thus minify every spot and 
imperfection. The Pharisee in the temple con- 
fessed a great many sins, but they were his 

neighbor's sins and the publican's sins : he 
254 



DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 255 

made no confession of sin for himself. Most of 
us are in the same clanger. We like to think 
of our ways when they are good, — it flatters 
our vanity to be able to approve and commend 
ourselves ; but, when our conduct has not been 
particularly satisfactory, we like to turn our 
back upon it, and solace ourselves meanwhile 
by thinking on our neighbor's evil ways. And 
here, strange to say, it seems to please many of 
us best to find things we cannot approve or 
commend. One of the last lessons of Christian 
charity which most of us learn, is to rejoice 
with others in their attainments of character, 
and to be pained and grieved when we find 
blemishes and stains in their lives. 

But it is a brave thing for a man to say, " I 
will think upon my own ways," and to say it 
when he knows his ways have not been good 
and right, but wrong. It is an excellent thing 
for us to turn our lenses in upon our own 
hearts, in order to see if our own ways are 
right. This should always be our first duty. 
We should take heed to ourselves before we 
try to look after the mistakes of others, and 



256 DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

point them out. There is only one person in 
all the world for whose ways any of us are 
really personally responsible, for whose life any 
one will be required to give account, — and that 
is one's self. Other people's wrong ways may 
pain us, and offend our sense of right ; and it is 
our duty to do all we can, in the spirit of Christ, 
to lead our neighbors into better ways : but, 
after all, when we stand before God's judg- 
ment-seat, the only one person in the whole 
world for whom any of us will have to be 
judged will be one's self. Certainly it is most 
important, then, that we give earnest heed to 
ourselves and our own ways in this world. 

Retrospect has a strange power. As we 
look back upon our ways, they do not appear to 
us as they did when we were passing through 
them. Things that seemed hard and painful at 
the time, now, as we look back upon them, 
appear lovely and radiant. There are experi- 
ences in most lives that at the time seemed to 
be calamities, but in the end prove rich bless- 
ings. Then, there is another class, — things 
which appeared attractive and enjoyable at the 



DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 2$7 

time, which afterward look repulsive and ab- 
horrent. This is true of all wrong actions, all 
deeds wrought under the influence of the evil 
passions. At the time, they give a thrill of 
pleasure ; but when the emotion has passed, 
and the wrong-doer turns and looks back at 
what he has done, it seems horrible in his 
eyes. The retrospect fills him with disgust 
and loathing. 

To look at one's ways when they have been 
wrong is not by any means a pleasant thing to 
do. Such looks, if honest, will produce deep 
sorrow. It is well that it should be so, — that 
regret should grow into sore pain, until it has 
burned into our hearts the lessons which we 
ought to learn from our follies and sins. But 
pain and regret should not be all. The Script- 
ures speak of the sorrow of the world which 
works death. This is a sorrow which passes 
away like the morning cloud or the early dew, 
leaving no impression, working no improve- 
ment, or the sorrow which ends only in despair. 
Godly sorrow is the pain for sins which leads 
to repentance. The prodigal in the far-off land 



258 DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

thought on his ways, and, in his shame, hid his 
face in his hands, and wept bitter tears over 
the ruin he had made of his life. But he did 
more than weep : he rose and went straight 
home to his father. No matter how badly one 
has failed, the noble thing to do is, not to sit 
down and waste other years in grieving over 
the lost years. Weeping in the darkness of 
despair amends nothing. The only truly wise 
thing to do is to rise, and save what remains. 
Because ten hours out of the allotted twelve 
are lost, shall we sit down and waste the other 
two in unavailing grief over the ten ? Had we 
not better use the two that are left in doing 
what we can to retrieve the consequences of 
our past folly ? " We have lost the battle," 
said Napoleon ; "but," drawing his watch from 
his # pocket, " it is only two o'clock, and we have 
time to fight and win another : " and the sun 
went down on a victorious army, No young 
person, especially, should ever yield to despair ; 
for in youth, there is yet too wide a margin to 
blot with the confession of defeat and failure. 
Even old age, with a whole lifetime behind it 



DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 259 

wasted, is not hopeless in a world on which 
Christ's cross stood. A few moments of sin- 
cere penitence and true repentance are enough 
in which to creep to Christ's feet, and find par- 
don. The divine mercy is so great, that no 
one need perish, though his sins be as scarlet. 
Then, though the life be so utterly wrecked, its 
glory so destroyed, its powers so wasted, that 
on earth it can never be any thing, even when 
saved, but a shattered ruin, it may still become 
radiant and beautiful in the blessed immortality 
which Christian faith reveals. Life does not 
end at the grave. Its path sweeps on into the 
eternal years, and there will be time enough 
then to retrieve all the wasted past. Some one 
speaks of heaven as the place where God makes 
over souls. Even lives wasted and marred on 
earth, turning to Christ only in the late even- 
ing-time, may find mercy, and in heaven's long, 
blessed day be made over into grace and 
beauty. 

But no careful seaman will run his ship 
twice on the same rock or reef. Even a child 
will not be likely to put his hand a second time 



260 DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

into the flame. We should learn by experience 
in living, and should not repeat the same folly, 
mistake, or sin over and over. Every error we 
make should be marked, and never made again. 
Thus we should use our very failures as step- 
ping-stones by which to climb to a higher, 
better life. Nothing comes of thinking on 
our ways if we do not turn from whatever we 
find to be wrong. Godly sorrow works repent- 
ance. A few tears amount to nothing if one 
goes on to-morrow in the same old paths. 
Some one says, "The true science of blunder- 
ing consists in never making the same mistake 
twice." This rule applies to sins as well as- to 
mistakes. The true science of living is never 
to commit the same sin a second time. 

But even this falls short. We are not saved 
by negatives. We can never go to heaven by 
merely turning from wrong ways. True re- 
pentance leads to Christ, and into his ways. 
It is the man who forsakes his wicked ways, 
and his wicked thoughts, and returns to the 
Lord, who is abundantly pardoned. No matter 
how black the sin when there is this kind of 



DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 26 1 

repentance. Even Christ does not undo the 
wrong past, and make that which has been 
done as though it had never been done. It 
never can be made true that the thief did not 
once steal ; but grace may so make over a 
marred life, that, where the blemish was, some 
special beauty may appear. " The oyster 
mends its shell with a pearl." Where the ugly 
wound was, there comes, with the healing, not 
a scar, but a pearl. The same is true in human 
souls when divine grace heals the wounds of 
sins. Sins that we truly repent of become 
pearls in the character. It is the experience of 
all who grow into Christ-like nobleness, that 
many of the golden lines of their later lives 
have been wrought out through their regrets 
and their repentings of wrong-doings. 

Some one says, "The besetting sin may be- 
come the guardian angel. Let us thank God 
that we can say it ! Yes, this sin that has sent 
me weary-hearted to bed, and desperate in heart 
to morning work, can be conquered. I do not 
say annihilated, but, better than that, conquered, 
captured, and transfigured into a friend ; so that 



262 DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

I, at last, shall say, 'My temptation has become 
my strength ; for to the very fight with it I owe 
my force.' " 

" We rise by the things that are under feet ; 
By what we have mastered of good or gain ; 
By the pride deposed, and the passion slain, 
And the vanquished ills that we hourly meet." 

An old man sat thinking, one day, about his 
past, recounting to himself his mistakes and 
follies, and regretting them, wishing he had 
never committed them, and that there was 
some way of undoing them. He took his pen, 
and on a sheet of paper made a list of twenty 
things in his life of which he was ashamed, and 
was about to seize an imaginary sponge, and 
rub them all out of his biography. He was 
thinking how much more beautiful his charac- 
ter would have been at the close of his years 
if these wrons: things had never been commit- 
ted. But to his amazement, as he thought of 
wiping out these evil things, he found, that, if 
there were any golden threads of beauty run- 
ning through his life, they had been woven into 



DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 263 

the web by the regrets he had felt over his 
wrong-doings ; and that, if he should wipe out 
these wrong acts, he would at the same time 
destroy the fairest lines of nobleness and worth 
in his present character. He learned in his 
meditation that he had gotten all his best 
things out of his errors, with the painful re- 
grets, the wise lessons, the true repentings, and 
the new life, which followed. 

There is a deep truth in this record of expe- 
rience : it is, that even our mistakes and sins, 
if we leave them, and find our way to Christ, 
will be transmuted into growth and the upbuild- 
ing of character. " We can so deal with the 
past, that we can make it give up to us virtue 
and wisdom." " We can make wrong the 
seed of right and righteousness ; we can trans- 
mute error into wisdom ; we can make sorrow 
bloom into a thousand forms, like fragrant flow- 
ers." If we truly repent of our sins, then, 
where they grew with their thorns and poison- 
seeds, there will be in our lives trees and plants 
of beauty with sweet flowers and rich fruits. 
Our very falls become new births to our souls, 



264 DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

if we rise again, and, in lowly penitence and 
sincere return, creep to the feet of Christ. His 
tender grace heals the wounds our sins have 
made, and restores our lives to strength and 
beauty ; but it must never be forgotten, that 
Christ alone can thus save us from our sins, 
and transmute their evil into good. This won- 
drous alchemy exists only in the Saviour's cross 
and blood. Left to itself, sin works death ; but, 
brought to Christ, the poison is destroyed, and 
death is changed to life. Longfellow says of 
the power of Christ's look after we have 
sinned, — 

" One look of that pale, suffering face 
Will make us feel the deep disgrace 

Of weakness : 
We shall be sifted till the strength 
Of self-conceit be changed at length 

To meekness. 

Wounds of the soul, though healed, will ache ; 
The reddening scars remain, and make 

Confession ; 
Lost innocence returns no more : 
We are not what we were before 

Transgression. 



DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 26$ 

But noble souls, through dust and heat, 
Rise from disaster and defeat 

The stronger, 
And, conscious still of the divine 
Within them, lie on earth supine 

No longer." 

In every life, there are mistakes and sins. 
The holiest do not live perfectly. The strong- 
est are liable to fall in sudden and unexpected 
temptation. The wisest will commit grave er- 
rors and follies at some time. We should know 
well in such cases how to deal with our sins. 
They must not be simply self-condoned, and 
left lying in the path behind us, while we hur- 
ry on ; nor must they bring despair to our 
hearts as we sorrow over them ; they must be 
sincerely and heartily repented of, and forgive- 
ness for them sought at the feet of Him we 
have offended and grieved. Then we must 
rise from disaster and defeat stronger, purer, 
nobler, through Christ victorious over our 
own sins, and a conqueror over our own 
defeat. 



266 DEALING WITH OUR SINS. 

"Yet, my soul, look not behind thee ! 
Thou hast work to do at last : 
Let the brave toil of the present 
Overarch thy crumbling past ; 
Build thy great acts high and higher, 
Build them on the conquered sod 
Where thy weakness first fell bleeding, 
Where thy first prayer was to God." 






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